Asteroid 2.3 times the size of dinosaur heading for Earth - NASA - The Jerusalem Post

The asteroid in question has been designated 2022 PW and is currently heading in our direction. .

The asteroid in question will pass by on August 16, 2022, as noted by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), specifically at the speed of 7.47 kilometers per second, which equates to 26,892 kilometers per hour.

According to NASA's CNEOS, the asteroid 2022 PW is set to pass the Earth at a distance of approximately 529,000 kilometers.

According to NASA's CNEOS, asteroid 2022 PW has an estimated diameter that could be as wide as 51 meters.

According to research from the Davidson Institute of Science, the educational arm of Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, an asteroid over 140 meters in diameter would release an amount of energy at least a thousand times greater than that released by the first atomic bomb if it impacted Earth.

An asteroid over a kilometer in width – like asteroid 138971 (2001 CB21), which flew past the Earth in early March 2022 – could trigger a worldwide cataclysm.

The field of planetary defense is specifically organized to do things like that, and scientists at NASA and across the world are hard at work trying to keep the Earth safe from extraterrestrial threats - with the term extraterrestrial meaning anything that isn't on Earth, like an asteroid, and not just referring to alien life