Asteroid 2023 FX13: Airplane sized space rock heading for Earth, NASA says

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NASA has warned that a space rock named Asteroid 2023 FX13 is charging towards Earth and is expected to get very close to the planet tomorrow, April 09.

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The airplane-sized asteroid will make its closest approach to the planet at a distance of just 7.07 million kilometers

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 The asteroid is moving at a speed of 42912 kilometers per hour.  

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According to NASA, this space rock belongs to the Apollo group of Near-Earth Asteroids.

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In order to keep a track on the movement of asteroids, NASA uses several telescopes and other machines.

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As of now, nearly 28,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered using various tech instruments which track objects in the sky.

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An asteroid's orbit is computed by finding the elliptical path about the sun that best fits the available observations of the object.

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The object's computed path about the sun is adjusted until the predictions of where the asteroid should have appeared in the sky at several observed times match the positions where it was actually observed to be at those same times, NASA says.

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NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), ensures the early detection of potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).

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These can be asteroids and comets whose orbits are predicted to bring them within 0.05 Astronomical Units of Earth (5 mn miles or 8 mn km) and of a size large enough to reach Earth's surface - that is, greater than approx 30 to 50 meters.