Gigantic Asteroid Is About to Skim Past Earth, NASA Says

A potentially hazardous asteroid that may be twice the size of the Empire State Building is set to zoom past Earth on Thursday.

The asteroid, named 418135 AG33, has an estimated diameter between 1,150 and 2,560 feet and will break into Earth's atmosphere at a rate of 23,300 mph. The asteroid is not expected to hit our planet.

The asteroid will come within about 2 million miles of Earth, which is eight times the average distance between Earth and the Moon.

This may sound like a big gap, but it is actually a stone thrown away.

We may know why the asteroid has a weird shape.

NASA flags any space object that comes within 120 million miles of Earth as a "near-Earth object" and any fast- moving object as a "potentially hazardous" object.

Astronomers watch for any deviation from their predicted trajectory that could put them on a collision course with Earth.

The incoming space rock was first discovered by asteroids at the Mt. The Lemmon SkyCenter observatory in Arizona last flew past Earth on 1 March 2015, according to the Center for Near Earth Object Studies.

The next close flyby of the asteroid is predicted to take place on May 25th, 2029.

Thursday's asteroid might not be the biggest space rock to hit us in the next few weeks.

When it passes us on 9 May 2022, the title will likely go to

If an asteroid flies straight at Earth, space agencies around the world are working on ways to stop it.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission was launched by NASA on November 24, 2021.

China is in the early stages of planning an asteroid-redirect mission. The country says it can divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with Earth by slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu.

There are related content.

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The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.