Context: Recently, the NASA has issued a warning that a huge “Asteroid 2020 ND” will move past Earth on July 24.

Detail

• Its distance from Earth has placed it in the “potentially dangerous” category.
• According to NASA, “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids” (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
• All asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs.
• ‘Near-Earth Objects’ (NEOs) are comets and asteroids nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits which allows them to enter the Earth’s neighbourhood.