NASA confirms 2km wide asteroid will come close to Earth within hours

NASA scientists have confirmed on Thursday, October 9 that an asteroid flying through space at 40,000 miles per hour will have a close encounter with the earth in the next couple of days.

The giant rock is going to pass the moon’s orbit of the earth without posing any threat and although it is going to be in a closer range than usual, it is not being labelled as a hazardous object.

The asteroid, known to researchers as 86666, was first discovered by NASA 16 years ago who classified its course as a near-Earth orbit. If an object comes inside a range of 4,600,000 miles it is considered potentially hazardous.

Asteroid 86666 will not be close enough to cause any damage according to Sentry, the collision monitoring system NASA has to project any possible impact asteroids may have with earth in the next 100 years.

Projections show that the next space rock that will come relatively close to the earth is known as 2015 RN35 which should skirt past the blue planet anytime between 2038 and 2114.

Thousands of objects are on NASA’s impact monitoring system and the organisation said that none of the comets or asteroids it has observed would come directly in the path of the earth in the foreseeable future.