The potentially hazardous asteroid 2023 FM is larger than a 40-story building and will zoom within 7.5 lunar distances from Earth on Thursday, April 6, according to NASA.
A skyscraper-size asteroid cruising the cosmos at 35,000 mph will make a relatively close approach to Earth Thursday , zooming past our planet at about 7.5 times the average distance between Earth and the moon, according to NASA . Fortunately, the meaty space rock will miss our planet by more than a million miles.
Astronomers estimate that the asteroid, named 2023 FM, measures somewhere between 393 and 853 feet in diameter, or roughly the height of a 40- to 80-story skyscraper. During its closest approach on Thursday afternoon, the asteroid will fly within roughly 1.8 million miles of our planet, far beyond the orbit of the full moon.
The space rock's formidable size, coupled with its uncomfortably close trajectory, earns it the title of a potentially hazardous asteroid , meaning a space rock that could measure larger than 460 feet in diameter and that could come within 4.65 million miles of Earth, according to NASA's near-Earth-object classification system.NASA tracks thousands of PHAs, as even a slight, unexpected tweak to an asteroid's orbit could send it on a deadly crash course with Earth.
If a large asteroid ever appears on course for a direct impact with Earth, humans may be ready to deal with it. In September 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid called Dimorphos, significantly altering the space rock's trajectory.
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