Most near-Earth objects drift by unnoticed, but this one almost carried our obituary draft with it. A skyscraper-size asteroid once predicted to slam into us in 2089 is now confirmed to be harmless. Instead of doomsday, we’ll get a front-row seat when it makes its close pass on Thursday, September 18.
The rock is called 2025 FA22, and it’s anywhere between 427 and 951 feet across—big enough to erase a city if it ever made contact. Discovered in March by the Pan-STARRS 2 telescope in Hawaii, it briefly topped the European Space Agency’s risk list after early models gave it a 0.01% chance of hitting Earth later this century.
That number sounds small until you remember the asteroid is moving at around 24,000 mph. “High-priority follow-up observations soon allowed astronomers to refine the asteroid’s trajectory and rule out any impact risk,” ESA confirmed.
This Massive Asteroid Is Flying Past Earth—and It’s Being Livestreamed
The flyby will still count as a close shave in cosmic terms. FA22 will zip past at just 520,000 miles away, about twice the distance to the Moon. Observatories around the world, including NASA’s Goldstone radar in California, will track it to learn more about its true size and shape.
For everyone else, the Virtual Telescope Project will stream it live from Italy starting at 11 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 17. If you own a solid backyard telescope or a pair of good binoculars, you may be able to catch it yourself.
Researchers are also treating the asteroid as a dress rehearsal. The International Asteroid Warning Network is running a mock drill as if FA22 were still on course for impact, testing emergency protocols and practicing how they’d plan a deflection mission.
The exercise helps scientists stress-test their systems for when an actual threat shows up, whether it’s years away or already in our imminent presence. “While 2025 FA22 poses no danger, practicing our ability to measure these properties is important,” ESA noted.
So instead of bracing for Armageddon, we get a free space show and reassurance that the system works. Astronomers spotted a threat, checked the math, and cleared it. The asteroid is just passing through. Humanity gets to stay on the guest list, not the impact site.
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