Asteroid as big as a bus flew past Earth

An asteroid the size of a bus has passed 186,000 miles (299,337km) from Earth – a pretty close distance.

Image description of a meteorite about to hit Earth. (Source: Daily Mail)

This asteroid coded HL129 flew closer to Earth than the Moon (about 238,855 miles, equivalent to 384,399 km) and came closest to Earth at 4:13 a.m. last Saturday.

The asteroid is about 7.6 miles wide, according to information from the Meteorite Observation Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA scientists and researchers around the world have been scanning the skies for asteroids that could potentially hit the Earth. Recent findings have also shown that the Earth is vulnerable to asteroid impacts.

A trio of former astronauts have claimed that Earth is 10 times more likely to be hit by an asteroid than previously thought, and the only way we can avoid disaster so far is to rely on “pure luck.”

While most meteorite impacts occur in the upper atmosphere or in uninhabited areas like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, there have been several meteorite impacts on land. One, for example, flew over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. The impact injured hundreds of people and served as a reminder of the dangers that meteorites pose.

NASA image depicting the orbit of asteroid HL 129.

A new report says that meteorite impacts with Earth caused 26 explosions of atomic bomb strength between 2000 and 2013. Some of the explosions were very powerful, and one was dozens of times more powerful than the 15-kiloton atomic bomb that exploded in Hiroshima.

The three former astronauts helped compile the data for the B612 Foundation, a private company that volunteers to protect Earth from asteroid impacts. The impacts were recorded by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, an organization that operates a global network of sensors to detect nuclear weapons tests.

The most powerful asteroid or comet impact to date was when an object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 with the force of 5,000-15,000 tons of TNT. A vast area of ​​forest covering 2,000 square kilometers was flattened by the blast.

Meteorite collisions with Earth have also inspired blockbuster movies such as"Armageddon"and"Deep Impact,"starring famous actors Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman respectively./.

Asteroid HL 129 flew very close and was only 186,000 miles away from Earth, but in the end, there was no collision.

According to VNA