Asteroid 1979XB holds the 2nd position on the European Space Agency (ESA) Risk List for Near-Earth Asteroids. It has a chance of impact predicted sometime midway through this century. It’s size is huge at 700 m (2,300 ft), and an impact of 1979XB will be a catastrophic event. The orbit of the space rock is still somewhat unreliable. You can find the best estimate in the visualization below.
Where is Asteroid 1979XB now?
3D Web App
Currently 1979 XB is --,--- from earth, racing through the solar system at --,--- (--,---) . It is getting --,--- closer to earth every second.
Since midnight last night it got --,--- --,--- us. Since you started looking at this page it is --,--- --,---.
Will it hit or miss Earth?
This asteroid is categorised as a hazardous near earth object. This means that, altough the distances at which the space rock is passing seem large, only a small variation of the orbit in fractions of a degree, means that 1979 XB could suddenly come a lot closer to the earth. There is disagreement about the next predicted approach. Some sources say 1979 XB could surprise us in 2024, however this could not be verified.
This NEA was discovered in 1979 by the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.
*This Interactive 3D Simulation is built on data provided by NASA JPL HORIZONS database for solar system objects and International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. Distances and speeds are estimates based on this data.
Photo Credit and other: NASA, ESO/S. Brunier, NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI, NASA/JPL-Caltech, JAXA, University of Tokyo & collaborators, UH/IA, Solar System Scope/INOVE CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, icons8.com, Péter Eke, NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Roman Tkachenko, Wikimedia Commons, Hayabusa 2 Arrival illustration by Akihiro Ikeshita (permission granted), oNline Web Fonts, Font Awesome, Galaxy vector created by stories – www.freepik.com