A potentially hazardous asteroid the size of a sports stadium is set to skim past Earth this week. The asteroid, known as 2024 ON, is estimated to be around 290 meters (950 feet) across. It will come within 1 million kilometers of Earth, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The asteroid is currently being tracked by the Virtual Telescope Project. It previously passed Earth back in 2013, and is expected to make another approach sometime in 2035, according to data gathered by NASA scientists. However, in this particular instance, it’ll pass Earth on Tuesday, September 17.
The stadium-sized asteroid was clocked traveling at around 40,000 kilometers per hour earlier this month. While that is certainly very quick, the asteroid doesn’t actually pose any risk to Earth, as it will pass roughly 2.6 times further from our planet than the lunar orbit. Due to its size, 2024 ON is considered 99 percent larger than any other near-Earth object, according to the Independent’s report.
A comet flying by Earth. Image source: Tryfonov/Adobe
This asteroid passing Earth isn’t the only cosmic event we’ll be witness to this Tuesday, either. We’ll also see a somewhat rare partial lunar eclipse as the Harvest Moon kicks off a new eclipse season. The reason this eclipse is so special is because it’s actually a supermoon, too, meaning the moon will appear much more prominent to us here on the surface.
Asteroids like 2024 ON pass by Earth all the time. They aren’t always this large, but they do come close—some even come closer than this one. The object was initially spotted by NASA’s Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program. It uses various observatories around the world to detect any undiscovered NEOs like this stadium-sized asteroid.
Make sure to head outside to see the full moon on Tuesday night. If you have a properly equipped telescope, you might even be able to spot this potentially hazardous telescope skimming past our planet well beyond the orbit of our moon. However, it might be moving a bit too fast to see easily.
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