A Giant Asteroid Is Flying By Earth Right Now: Should You Worry?

ACROSS AMERICA — An asteroid that’s 3,451 feet wide — about three times as wide as the Empire State Building is tall — is on track to buzz Earth on Tuesday.

Hurtling toward our planet at 47,344 miles per hour, its 1.2-million-mile brush with Earth is a close encounter in space terms. Its closest approach comes at about 4:51 p.m. Eastern time, according to NASA.

But the asteroid — known as 7483, discovered in 1994 and classified as 1994 PC1 — isn’t anything to worry about on Earth, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks asteroids and comets that could collide with our planet.

“Rest assured, 1994 PC1 will safely fly past our planet 1.2 million miles away,” NASA tweeted.

Scientists say 1994 PC1 won’t come this close to Earth over the next two centuries.

You won’t be able to see if just by looking up at the sky — it’s 1.2 million miles away, after all — but you should be able to see the asteroid with a small telescope. Italy’s Virtual Telescope Project, based in Rome, is hosting a livestream of the asteroid fly-by when it reaches peak brightness.

Although it’s large, it’s not the largest asteroid ever to buzz Earth. In 2017, asteroid 3122 Florence (1981 ET3), estimated to be 2.5 miles in diameter and 5.5 miles wide, flew past Earth on Sept. 1, 2017, and is set to return again on Sept. 2, 2057.

Scientists are aware of about 20,000 near-Earth objects, most of them asteroids, and make about 30 new discoveries each week. But NASA estimates that about two-thirds of space rocks in our solar system that are larger than 460 feet in diameter haven’t yet been discovered.

As with many things, the best defense is a good offense. In 1998, Congress directed NASA to establish a program to detect, track and project future close approaches to Earth of space rocks and other near-Earth objects.

NASA says asteroid impacts are the only potentially preventable natural disaster. The space agency and its partners are studying several different approaches to deflecting a hazardous asteroid, the most advanced of which is called the Double-Asteroid Redirection Test, slated for September.

In that test, a smart car-sized NASA spacecraft will deliberately crash into Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the near-Earth asteroid known as Didymos, at about 130,000 mph in an attempt to change its motion in space. It’s part of a program mandated by Congress to hunt for and report on at least 90 percent of near-Earth objects 460 feet and larger that could threaten Earth.