You can watch as the asteroid whooshes harmlessly through the night sky, four times the size of the Empire State Building.
The asteroid, dubbed 7335 (1989 JA), occasionally swoops a little too close to Earth. The rock will swing within 2.5 million miles of our planet, or 10 times the average distance between Earth and the moon. The sun rises at 2:26 UTC. It is too far away to see with the naked eye, but you can see it with a powerful telescope. You can watch the asteroid pass live on the Virtual Telescope Project. The stream starts at 9:00 p.m. Friday, 1:00 a.m. The time is UTC.
NASA has labeled the asteroid potentially hazardous due to its enormous size and close proximity to our planet. It will be the largest asteroid to make a close approach to Earth every year, according to NASA, and the space rock is estimated to whizz by at about 47,200 mph (76,000 km/h) or 20 times faster than a bullet fired from a rifle.
What are the largest impact craters?
The asteroid will pass 70 times farther away from Earth than the moon in 2055.
NASA tracks more than 29,000 near-Earth objects each year. Any object that will pass within 30 million miles of Earth's equator is called a NEO. Most of these objects are very small; 7335 is larger than 99% of the other NEOs that NASA follows.
Live Science previously reported that 7335 is an Apollo-class asteroid, which means that it is periodically crossing the Earth's path. About 15,000 such asteroids are known by the astronomer.
If Asteroid 7335 changes its trajectory, it could cause a lot of damage to our planet. NASA has begun testing the possibility of knocking a potentially hazardous asteroid off course using rockets launched from Earth.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) was launched by NASA in November of 2021. Dimorphos is not on a collision course with Earth, but it is close enough and large enough to be a tempting target for the mission.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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