On Friday, an asteroid the size of a football stadium streaked by Earth; it will return in less than ten years.
NASA estimates that the enormous space rock is around 890 feet in size. (That is larger than the Empire State Building in New York City by more than thrice.)
According to the organization, the asteroid was around 7.5 times the distance between the Earth and Moon at its closest point, which was 1,770,000 miles from Earth.
According to NASA, objects bigger than roughly 150 meters are considered “potentially hazardous” if they approach the earth within 4.6 million miles (19.5 times the distance to the moon).
According to Business Insider, experts believe asteroids of this size have the capacity to completely destroy cities if they collide with Earth. These asteroids are dubbed “city killers” by some.
Space.com claims that the asteroid is not regarded as a “planet killer,” nonetheless. Compared to the Vredefort meteor, which killed dinosaurs over 66 million years ago, it is at least 70 times smaller.
According to USA Today, this was the asteroid’s first approach to Earth since 2016.
The Associated Press reports that the space rock, which was found in 2008, probably won’t return to the region until about 2032.
On Friday, three more asteroids—which are thought to be more akin to the sizes of houses or airplanes—are predicted to speed by Earth.