After the great comet that visited us on Halloween, a great asteroid did the same these Christmas days: a massive space rock of about 2 kilometers in length baptized as 2003 SD220 flew over our planet at 11 million kilometers (about 28 times farther than the distance between the Earth and the Moon). Thanks to the data taken in this latest observation, scientists will be able to better monitor their next approach, which will take place in 2018 (and will pass at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers).
But what other asteroids will visit our planet in the coming years? Will an asteroid pass close enough to trigger earthquakes and volcanoes?
Between now and 2050 there will be up to 11 asteroids that approach our planet and that will have to be taken into consideration, since the distances to which they will approach will be less than the mean radius of the lunar orbit, that is, 385,000 kilometers, according to reports the RIA Novosti agency through the Russian Emergency Ministry. The size of these rocks will move in a range of between 7 and 945 meters.
The first to make its appearance on this side of the galaxy will be an asteroid 17 meters in diameter and the encounter will take place at a speed of 6.8 kilometers per second on October 12, 2017, just 115,000 kilometers from Earth. And it is that in 2016 no dangerous approach has been predicted.
The one that will be unusual and particularly eye-catching will be 99942 Apophis , 393 meters in diameter and a few hundred meters wide, which is expected to pass through the Earth (at a speed of 7.42 kilometers per second) on April 13. from 2029 to 38,400 kilometers, a distance close to the orbits of geostationary satellites, about a tenth of the Earth-Moon distance, so it will be visible to the naked eye.
