Asteroid 2002 AJ129 will make a close approach to Earth on Feb. 4, 2018 at 1:30 p.m. PST (4:30 p.m. EST / 21:30 UTC). It is expected to be the largest and speediest space object to whiz past the Earth in 2018. The 0.7-mile long body is larger than the tallest building on Earth, Dubai’s half-mile high Burj Khalifa skyscraper will zoom past Earth at 76,000 miles per hour.
At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will be no closer than 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon (about 2.6 million miles, or 4.2 million kilometers). So, it will miss Earth, as seen in this animation below.
2002 AJ129 is an intermediate-sized near-Earth asteroid, somewhere between 0.3 miles (0.5 kilometers) and 0.75 miles (1.2 kilometers) across. It was discovered on Jan. 15, 2002, by the former NASA-sponsored Near Earth Asteroid Tracking project at the Maui Space Surveillance Site on Haleakala, Hawaii. The asteroid’s velocity at the time of closest approach, 76,000 mph (34 kilometers per second), is higher than the majority of near-Earth objects during an Earth flyby. The high flyby velocity is a result of the asteroid’s orbit, which approaches very close to the Sun — 11 million miles (18 million kilometers). Although asteroid 2002 AJ129 is categorized as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), it does not pose an actual threat of colliding with our planet for the foreseeable future.
“We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately,” said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Our calculations indicate that asteroid 2002 AJ129 has no chance — zero — of colliding with Earth on Feb. 4 or any time over the next 100 years.”
JPL hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, an element of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.
More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch
For more information about NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense
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On a slightly different tack —
I find it interesting that American Meteor Society reports goes from less than a hundred per year in 2005 to over 5,000 per year in 2017. Why the BIG increase — better reporting, or more verified reporting in recent years, or maybe just more fireballs? Who can say?
https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/
and
http://fireball.imo.net/members/imo_fireball_stats/
All I can say is if you see one of these rare fireball events , please report it to
http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo/report_intro
or
http://fireballs.imo.net/members/imo/report_intro
Yes the big one misses
Or at least if it was going to hit would you all really think the world would tell us months or days before hand.
As humans would act irrational riot and loot people would start going crazy if they felt they only had seconds to live. Much like the missile alerts that happened in Hawaii recently, the public response would be crazed. Did the Russians warn their people when the metor struck its land a few years ago? No they didnt how ever they were quick to reapond.
If the big one misses us great its the Debris floating alongside it that i worry about.
Imagine what new rare element’s this thing could be made of. Possable element’s that doesnt exist here on earth. Assuming we all live a chance to hit this thing and study the rock could prove valuables unknown.