Two Down, Two More to Go: Earth is Bombarded by Asteroid Visits

© NASA . JPL-CaltechAn artist's concept of catastrophic collisions between asteroids located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter.
An artist's concept of catastrophic collisions between asteroids located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. - Sputnik International
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The development comes after NASA announced that a potentially hazardous asteroid is expected to fly by our planet on 7 May. 2009 XO belongs to the category of Apollo asteroids, whose orbit crosses that of the Earth.

The 1st of May is full of surprises for Earth as not one, not two, but four celestial guests have decided to meet our planet, the largest one is bigger than the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge in the United States.

This big guy called 2020 DM4 whizzed past us at a break-neck speed of 14,000 miles per hour (22,000 kmph) at 5:05 a.m. EDT. 2020 DM4 has a diameter of 853 feet (259 metres) and despite NASA categorising it as a near-Earth object, whose orbit brings it in close proximity to Earth, it passed us at a safe distance of 4.4 million miles.

Before the rendezvous with this behemoth, our planet was visited by 2020 HF4, which gracefully waddled by at a speed of 6,000 miles per hour (9,000 kmph) at 4:50 a.m. EDT.

At 11:36 a.m. EDT Earth will be saluted by 2020 HU2 with a diameter of 95 feet (28 metres), which will be followed by 2020 HR6 travelling at an enormous speed of 27,000 miles per hour (43,000 kmph) and is 108 feet (32 metres) in diameter. It will swoosh past the Earth at 6:34 p.m. EDT.

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