UFA, 19 April 2017. /Bashinform News Agency, Alfiya Agliullina/. The asteroid JO25, about 1.5 kilometers wide, is approaching the Earth. On the night of April 20, it will approach at a distance of 1.8 million kilometers (about five distances from Earth to the Moon).
This is the maximum closest distance of approaching of such a cosmic body for the last 400 years, BBC News reports with reference to the NASA.
The asteroid JO25 does not carry a real threat to the planet, although it is on the list of space objects potentially dangerous for life on Earth. If such an asteroid collided with the Earth, one of the continents would be completely destroyed, even if the asteroid fell into the ocean, experts say.
The asteroid will fly at a record high speed - about 33 km per second, this is about 120 thousand kilometers per hour. It will come to the Earth at the closest distance at about two o'clock in the morning Moscow time.
"With a clear sky above the Bashkir capital, the asteroid can be seen even in small amateur telescopes", the director of the Ufa Planetarium Anatoly Denisov commented on the astronomical phenomenon to the Bashinform News Agency.