Story at a glance
- NASA projects the gigantic chunk of rock will fly by Earth at more than 43,000 miles per hour on Jan. 18 around 4:51 p.m. EST.
- The flyby will be the closest the asteroid — which is estimated to measure some 3,451 feet wide — will come to Earth over the next two centuries.
- The incoming asteroid was first discovered in 1994.
An asteroid that is estimated to measure more than twice the height of the Empire State building will make one of its closest passes by Earth next week, according to NASA.
The massive asteroid dubbed 7482 (1994PC1) will pass within 1.2 million miles of Earth, fairly close by cosmic standards, although far enough that the object poses no threat to the planet.
NASA projects the gigantic chunk of rock will fly by Earth at more than 43,000 miles per hour on Jan. 18 around 4:51 p.m. EST.
The flyby will be the closest the asteroid — which is estimated to measure some 3,451 feet wide — will come to Earth over the next two centuries and will be close enough to observe with a small backyard telescope, according to EarthSky.
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The incoming asteroid was first discovered in 1994.
This comes weeks after a separate asteroid called 4660 zoomed past the planet in December. The celestial object came about 2.4 million miles from Earth.
Meanwhile, a spacecraft launched by NASA in November is on its way to deliberately slam into an asteroid more than 6 million miles from Earth in September or early October of this year.
The purpose of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test is to observe how the asteroid’s trajectory shifts when the spacecraft crashes into at more than 15,000 miles per hour. The technique could one day be used to defend Earth from an incoming asteroid that threatens the planet.
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