Peanut-shaped meteorite nearly half a kilometer long could collide with Earth

This peanut-shaped asteroid is considered to be on a collision course with Earth. Can humanity avoid such a disaster?

Astronomers have discovered a 400-meter-long asteroid that is likely to hit Earth.

Illustration: Internet.

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico with its giant radio telescope captured images of the asteroid, named 2015 BN509, as it was on its way past Earth.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) warns that this asteroid, about 200 meters wide and 400 meters long, poses a potential risk to Earth as it could crash into our planet one day.

Last week, the asteroid came within 70,500 km of Earth. At its closest, the asteroid was only 14 times closer to the planet than the Earth is to the moon.

According to planetary scientist Dr. Edgard Rivera-Valentín, the peanut-shaped asteroid was formed by two pieces of space objects sticking together after a collision. Dr. Edgard also said that unlike natural disasters, collisions between Earth and asteroids are avoidable.

NASA now has an early warning system called Scout that can map out potential collision paths within 10 minutes of detecting an asteroid approaching Earth.

The system will then alert three other telescopes so that the devices can observe and determine the most accurate trajectory of the meteorite.

According to Tintuc