Story at a glance
- Asteroid 4660 Nereus is considered “potentially hazardous” because of its proximity to Earth.
- On Saturday, it came within 2.4 million miles of Earth’s surface and is expected to come within 745,000 miles of Earth by 2060.
- Nereus is estimated to be worth $4.71 billion, containing billions worth of nickel, iron and cobalt.
Asteroid 4660 Nereus flew past Earth over the weekend and didn’t cause any damage, but scientists are still going to closely watch the valuable piece of rock.
On Saturday, Dec. 11, asteroid Nereus came about 2.4 million miles from Earth’s surface, about 10 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
Scientists classify Nereus as “potentially hazardous” because it falls under the definition of a near-Earth object (NEO). Any asteroid or comet with an orbit that can pass within about 30 million miles from Earth’s is considered a NEO, which makes Nereus especially close in cosmic standards.
However, Nereus came and went with no damage to Earth, and scientists predict by 2060 it will inch a little bit closer, predicted to fly about 1.2 million kilometers from Earth. That’s about 745,000 miles, but still only five times the distance between Earth and the moon.
NASA says that about once a year, a car-sized asteroid hits Earth, turning into a fireball and burning up before even reaching Earth’s surface. Only about every 2,000 years does a meteoroid the size of a football field hit Earth and cause significant damage.
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Besides Nereus gradually inching closer to Earth, the Eiffel Tower-sized asteroid is considered incredibly valuable. Asterank, a database that monitors more than 600,000 asteroids, estimates that Nereus’ value sits at $4.71 billion, thought to contain billions worth of nickel, iron and cobalt.
According to EarthSky, Nereus travels at about 14,719 miles per hour, which is considered slow for space rocks. That speed gives Nereus an advantage for parties that want to send a robotic spacecraft to study it. Back in 2009 researchers considered Nereus, “a strong candidate for a rendezvous mission.”
Studying asteroids like Nereus through asteroid mining is a concept that began to gain popularity in the early 2010s. Under former President Trump in 2017, NASA developed its first-ever robotic mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid with the intention to capture a boulder off of an asteroid and eventually bring it back to Earth to be studied.
The project didn’t end up panning out, with the White House issuing a Space Policy Directive 1 to end the mission.
However, asteroid mining could begin to pick back up again as the commercial space industry has taken off with big players like Blue Origin and SpaceX, and Nereus could be the first target.
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