It’s the first of two in less than 48 hours – Executive Summary

Starting Thursday, the Earth will be visited by the asteroid 2011 UL21, which has a diameter of 2310 meters: this is the largest of the two asteroids that will pass by our planet in less than 48 hours – 2024 MK, and its diameter ranges between 120 and 120 meters. It has a size of 260 meters and will appear this Saturday, on Asteroid Day.

What will happen on Thursday is what will make the “biggest impact”: a massive asteroid known as the “killer planet” will make its closest approach to Earth in the past 125 years. Measuring between 1.7 and 3.9 kilometers across (SpaceReference.org), 2011 UL21 is a mountain the size of Mount Everest moving at 93,000 kilometers per hour — one of the largest space rocks ever seen. The Earth rotates in 110 years.

Although classified as “potentially dangerous”, due to its potential for destruction on a planetary scale, 2011 UL21 poses no danger and will pass within 6,641,274 kilometers of our planet – it orbits the Sun once every 3.09 years, the space object that it is. . Larger than 99% of known near-Earth asteroids (NEA), according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

You can follow the asteroid’s passage live through this location The broadcast begins at nine o’clock in the evening, Lisbon time.

The sighting of 2011 UL21 is a unique opportunity, as the asteroid will not be very close to Earth until 2089, when it will again pass within about 2.7 million kilometers of the planet, at least 2.5 times closer than the current approach to Earth, according to NASA Laboratory. Turbo boost.

In addition to 2011 UL21, another asteroid, 2024 MK, was recently discovered by the Atlas Observatory in South Africa.

This asteroid, which has a diameter of 160 meters, will also approach the Earth, and will pass at a distance of less than 300,000 kilometers, which represents 80% of the distance to the Moon. This approach is classified as “safe” by the European Space Agency, but is being monitored due to a potential danger – an asteroid of this size would cause significant damage if it collided with the planet.