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This asteroid orbits the Sun every 664 days. However, later it is now expected to come near the earth on 2 March 2031. This asteroid was first discovered by American astronomer Eleanor F. Helin in the year 1982. This asteroid is part of the Apollo group and passes near the Earth’s orbit while orbiting the Sun.
The US space agency NASA has warned that a giant asteroid the size of France’s Eiffel Tower is coming towards Earth next month. NASA has placed this asteroid in the category of potentially dangerous asteroid. The name of this asteroid is 4660 Nereus. It is almost 3 times bigger than the football pitch. If it hits the earth, the consequences can be dire, but the good thing is that it will pass far away from our earth.
NASA said that the asteroid will pass a distance of 3.9 million kilometers, which is 10 times the total distance between Earth and the Moon. NASA said that on December 11, this asteroid can pass close to the Earth. Asteroid Nereus is 330 meters long, which makes it 90 percent larger than asteroids. However, there are many other asteroids bigger than this.
This asteroid orbits the Sun every 664 days. However, later it is now expected to come near the earth on 2 March 2031. This asteroid was first discovered by American astronomer Eleanor F. Helin in the year 1982. This asteroid is part of the Apollo group and passes near the Earth’s orbit while orbiting the Sun.
Asteroids are rocks that revolve around the Sun like a planet, but they are much smaller than planets in size. Most of the asteroids in our solar system are found in the asteroid belt in the orbit of Mars and Jupiter, ie Mars and Jupiter.
Apart from this, they keep moving in the orbit of other planets and revolve around the sun along with the planet. About 4.5 billion years ago, when our Solar System was formed, then such clouds of gas and dust which could not take the shape of a planet and were left behind, were transformed into these rocks i.e. asteroids. This is the reason that their shape is also not round like the planets. No two asteroids are alike.
NASA has placed this Nereus in the category of dangerous asteroid. These days, NASA is keeping an eye on two thousand asteroids which can become a threat to the Earth. If a high speed space object is likely to come closer than 46.5 lakh miles from Earth, then space organizations consider it dangerous. NASA’s Sentry system already monitors such threats. In this, for the coming 100 years, there are currently 22 such asteroids, which have the slightest chance of hitting the Earth.
