Massive 'Asteroid 2020 ND' To Move Past Earth On July 24: NASA

A massive asteroid will move past Earth on July 24, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has said. The asteroid named “Asteroid 2020 ND” will pass the living planet on Sunday.

It is also likely that two other asteroids will pass Earth which NASA has named as 2016 DY30 and 2020 ME3. However, these asteroids don't pose a threat to Earth.

“Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth. Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs,” NASA said in a statement.

Talking about Asteroid 2020 ND, it is 170 metre-long. Travelling at a speed of 48,000 kilometres per hour, it will be as close as 0.034 astronomical units (5,086,328 kilometres) to our planet. This distance categorises it as "potentially dangerous".

According to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), 2016 DY30 will be as close as about 0.02306 astronomical units to Earth (3.4 million kilometres), adding its closest approach of the bigger asteroid will be on July 19 at 10:02 AM IST. The space agency has classified it as an

Apollo asteroid because it crosses Earth’s path while travelling around the sun.

The other asteroid, 2020 ME3 will be farther away from Earth when it reaches its closest distance to the planet at 02:51 AM IST the next day (July 21), CNEOS said. Its expected distance is about 0.03791 astronomical units (5.6 million kilometres).

It has been labelled as an Amor asteroid as it does not cross Earth’s path and only flies close to Earth on several occasions.