A “potentially hazardous” asteroid is projected to pass Earth late tonight/early tomorrow morning.
The asteroid, called Asteroid 2020 XR, is around the size of a football stadium and is traveling at about 27,500 miles per hour, according to LiveScience. Early on December 4, it will reach its closest approach to Earth on record—within 1.37 million miles. It likely won’t be this close again until 2196 at the earliest. According to Science Reference, 2020 XR is categorized as an Apollo-Class Asteroid, an object “whose orbit crosses the orbit of Earth.”
NASA defines any object that is larger than 492 feet and within 4.6 million miles of Earth as a “potentially hazardous object.” However, though Asteroid 2020 XR is deemed “potentially hazardous” because of its size and proximity to our planet, scientists say there’s no need to worry about the asteroid.
“When astronomers first discovered 2020 XR, they thought it had a small chance of impacting Earth in 2028,” Juan Luis Cano, coordinator of the ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center, said in the statement. “But by going back and finding the asteroid in older data, they were able to refine its trajectory and rule out any hazard.”
If the asteroid were to hit Earth, the impact would be catastrophic, but that isn’t expected to happen—at least not in this lifetime.
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The post ‘Potentially Hazardous’ Asteroid Will Zoom Past Earth Tonight appeared first on VICE.
