The West Australian
May 6, 2011, 8:15 am
NASA/Cornell/Arecibo ©
Radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55.
An asteroid with a diameter of 400m will make its closest approach to Earth later this year.
Known as YU55, the asteroid would fly within the moon's orbit narrowly missing Earth, according to reports.
"The space rock will hurtle past our planet at a distance of just 201,700 miles (324,600km) during its closest approach on November 8," The Daily Mail has reported.
"That is closer to Earth than the moon, which orbits 238,857 miles (384,400km) away on average.
"With a width of some 400m and weighing 55 million tons, YU55 will be the largest object to ever approach Earth."
But US space agency NASA said there was no cause for concern.
"Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years," NASA said.
"However, this will be the closest approach to date by an object this large that we know about in advance and an event of this type will not happen again until 2028."
NASA spokesman Don Yeomans said YU55's gravitational pull on planet Earth would be immeasurably miniscule.
It would not affect the tides "or anything else", he said.
If YU55 were to hit Earth, it would exert a force the equivalent of 65,000 atomic bombs and leave a crater 10km wide and 610m deep, The Mail said.
"It orbits the sun once every 14 years but will not collide with Earth for at least a century," the report said.
"Scientists around the world have long been discussing ways of deflecting potentially hazardous asteroids to prevent them hitting Earth.
"One of the more popular methods is to detonate a nuclear warhead on an approaching asteroid to deflect it from its orbital path.
"Last year, physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US argued that nuclear weapons could be the best strategy for avoiding an asteroid impact - especially for large asteroids and with little warning time."
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