Empire Building Sized Asteroid Make Close Encounter with Earth

Massive Asteroid, including one the size of the Empire State Building, are expected to pass Earth in the next weeks, with one passing by as early as Wednesday night.  On November 13, the space rock “2004 UE,” which is just a few feet shorter than the Midtown tower at 1,246 feet, will be 2.6 million miles away.

According to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Objects, the Asteroid “1996 VB3” which has a diameter of around 750 feet is anticipated to travel closest to Earth, at a distance of about 2.1 million miles. When compared to our nearest neighbour Venus, which is 70 million miles distant, the distance is little. It will pass past at a speed of almost 9 million miles per second.

The appearance of the Asteroid will coincide with that of space rock 2021 SM3, which flew past Earth from a distance of 3.5 million miles on Friday. The space rock, discovered last month, has a circumference of up to 525 feet, making it greater than Giza’s Great Pyramid.

Even if the Asteroid are arriving at a close distance, Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California’s CNEOS, believes they are still too far away to pose a hazard.The center is expecting seven to pass near Earth in the coming weeks.“2004 UE” will be followed by an Asteroid, 2016 JG12, which is predicted to fly by 3.4 million miles away from the planet a week later.