Newly found asteroid Earth 2014 initially discovered on Aug. 31 will pass by "very close" to Earth on Sunday, NASA reports. According to the Daily Mail, the size of the newly found asteroid Earth 2014, estimated to be the size of a whale. Its size was approximated by astronomers through its reflected brightness.
The estimate size of the space rock is 60 feet or 18 meters long, and it is expected to go over New Zealand around 2:18 p.m. EDT (11:18 a.m. PDT / 18:18 UTC) Sunday.
Called 2014 RC, the newly found asteroid Earth 2014 will be one-tenth the distance from the centre of Earth to the moon by the time it is at its closest to Earth. 2014 RC will be about 25,000 miles or 40,000km, above New Zealand on Sept. 7.
According to CNN, NASA said the newly found asteroid Earth 2014 will not be hitting the planet or any of its thousands of satellites. It will reportedly provide astronomers and scientists the opportunity to study it.
Though invisible to the naked eye, NASA said amateur astronomers will get the chance to glimpse the newly found asteroid Earth 2014 through the use of small telescopes.
CNN reports that the 2014 RC was initially discovered on Aug. 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz. According to the Daily Mail, it was also independently detected the following night by the Pan-Starrs 1 telescope in Hawaii.
NASA has a "Near Earth Object Program" and it estimated thousands of asteroids could be threatening Earth. Experts say however that none of the ones they are tracking will likely hit the Earth anytime soon.
News of the newly found asteroid Earth 2014 reportedly came days after a Professor Brian Cox told MailOnline that the world cannot handle any asteroid threats, threats which someday could wipe out the human race.
Cox said that "there is an asteroid with our name on it and it will hit us." However, nobody knows for sure when a serious impact could occur.
"It could be tomorrow. The thing that bothers me about that is we do know how to do something about it," Cox added.
According to the Daily Mail, Cox was referring to the bus-sized asteroid named 2014 EC, which came within 38,300 or 61,637km miles of Earth in March. It was reportedly around a sixth of the distance between the moon and our planet.
Apparently, that asteroid isn't the only one to be threatening the Earth. Currently, NASA is tracking 1,400 "potentially hazardous asteroids", trying to predict their future paths and effects upon impact.
Former astronaut Ed Lu also said that the threat is so serious that it has been called a "cosmic roulette". He added that only "blind luck" has saved humanity from serious impact in the past.
Asteroids really do get past the radars of scientists and amateur astronomers tracking them.
According to CNN, on Feb. 15, 2013, an almost 60-foot-wide meteor plunged into the Earth's atmosphere and exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. When it exploded, it reportedly had the force of about 30 nuclear bombs and even injured about 1,500 people.
Right now, NASA is trying to speed up its way of tracking potentially hazardous asteroids, according to USA Today Network. The agency is also still trying to learn how to deflect meteors threatening Earth.
NASA's Asteroid Initiative includes a plan to capture an asteroid and tug it into orbit around the moon in the 2020s, reports CNN.
Meanwhile, the newly found asteroid Earth 2014 will not be hitting the Earth on Sunday, but its orbit will be bringing it back to the planet in the future.
Newly found asteroid Earth 2014's future movement will now be closely monitored, reports the Daily mail. However, NASA said there are no future threats to Earth that they have currently identified.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
