‘Potentially Hazardous’ Asteroid Will Fly By Earth Tomorrow: Here’s How To Watch
Topline
A football stadium-size asteroid will zoom by Earth on Friday morning, and because of its size and how close to the planet it’s coming, NASA scientists are monitoring it for any potential danger.
Asteroid In Outer Space With Universe Background
Key Facts
An 880-foot asteroid is expected to pass by Earth on Friday, coming within 4 million miles of the planet—about 17 times further than the moon— according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The stadium-size asteroid is dubbed 2011 AM24, which orbits the Earth every 467 days but typically does not pass this close; it will make its next close approach on Sept. 21, 2038, though it’ll be from a much farther distance of about 17 million miles.
NASA labels objects larger than 492 feet that come within 4.6 million miles of Earth “potentially hazardous objects,” so scientists monitor their potential danger even though they don’t expect 2011 AM24 to pose a threat.
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When Will The Asteroid Pass Earth?
2011 AM24 is expected to pass by Earth around 10:56 a.m. EDT on Friday, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
How Can I See The Asteroid?
Because of the distance, the asteroid may not be visible to the naked eye. However, NASA offers a virtual asteroid tracker to watch where in the solar system asteroids are in real time, and the Virtual Telescope Project will livestream the event.
Big Number
More than 1.3 million. That’s how many asteroids NASA estimates are in the solar system.
Key Background
Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the sun like planets, though they’re much smaller, according to NASA. They’re made up of the leftover remnants from when the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago. Asteroid 2011 AM24 is one of 18,232 Apollo-classed asteroids, which are asteroids that can cross into Earth’s orbit. NASA has taken the threat of an asteroid coming into contact with Earth more seriously in recent years. In 2022, it carried out its first Double Asteroid Deflection Test, which changed an asteroid’s orbit. NASA launched a spacecraft into space and hit the asteroid, shortening its orbit by 32 minutes. NASA also sent the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on a mission to an asteroid near Earth called Bennu in order to study it. The spacecraft collected samples of the asteroid and dropped them off on Earth in September 2023, though the findings haven’t been made public yet. Scientists believe Bennu has a chance to collide with Earth in 2182, so that’s why research is being conducted on the asteroid. The scientists with the OSIRIS-REx mission believe Bennu has a one-in-2,700 chance of hitting a Texas-sized portion of Earth in 2182, according to a 2023 paper published in Icarus.
Tangent
A much smaller airplane-size asteroid will zoom by Earth around 1:41 a.m. EDT on Friday. The 90-foot asteroid is called 2024 MH1, and will come within 1.1 million miles of the planet.
