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UPDATE : you’re able to watch the asteroid flyby on the video above for yourself thanks to alive streamfrom The Virtual Telescope Project , which will begin at 1:00 p.m. ET on Feb. 2 .
A " potentially wild " football arena - size asteroid will zip safely past Earth on Friday ( Feb. 2 ) , and , in doing so , will reach its close point to our planet for more than 100 yr . It will also be at least several centuries before the space stone ever gets this close to us again .
The asteroid will pass Earth as it hurtles through space at 41,000 mph.
The massive asteroid , list 2008 OS7 , is around 890 feet ( 271 measure ) across and will pass by Earth at a space of around 1.77 million international nautical mile ( 2.85 million kilometre ) , according toNASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL ) . For context , that is more than seven meter further away than the Sun Myung Moon orbit Earth .
As it choke by Earth , the asteroid will be traveling at a upper of around 41,000 miles per hour ( 66,000 km / h ) , concord to JPL .
To liken this space rock ’s girth to that of other asteroids , it is around half the size of asteroid Bennu , whichNASAvisited and choose samples of , and at least 70 times smaller than the Vredefort meteor — thelargest known space rock to ever hit Earth .
2008 OS7 has a highly elliptical orbit around the sun (white ring).
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Due to its size and proximity to Earth , the asteroid isclassified as potentially hazardousdespite the fact it will never come close enough to touch on our planet , JPL predictions show . If the space rock candy did ever crash to Earth , it isbig enough to wipe out a large city , such as New York .
However , the physical object is n’t hefty enough to be considered a"planet killer " asteroid , such as the Vredefort meteoroid or the blank rock thatwiped out the dinosaur 66 million year ago .
NASA has identified around 25,000 potentially hazardous asteroid , although a substantial per centum of these are not as big as the impending blank space rock ‘n’ roll . One of these venomous asteroids is anticipate to hit Earth every 20,000 years , Live Science previously reported .
2008 OS7 has a highly elliptical orbit , mean that it does not revolve evenly aroundthe sun . Because of this , the distance between it and Earth varies wildly whenever the distance rock makes a close approach to our planet . For example , when the asteroid near us concisely after its find in 2008 , it was around 55.9 million miles ( 90 million km ) off from us , which is more than 30 times further off than it will be this calendar week , grant to JPL .
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Scientists have only directly keep the asteroid fly by Earth twice before . But based on the space John Rock ’s orbital information , JPL has simulated every stuffy approach the asteroid has made since 1900 and predicted every close approaching it will make until 2198 . At no other point in this nearly 300 - year dataset is the asteroid expected to be close to our planet than on Feb. 2 this twelvemonth .
Several other asteroid have made close approaches to or directly make Earth in the last few weeks .
On Jan. 27 , anairplane - sizing asteroid passed by Earthat a distance of just 220,000 miles ( 354,000 km ) , which is slightly closer than the moon is to our planet . And on Jan. 21 , a child - size of it asteroid was discover by astronomers around 3 hours before itexploded in the aura above Germany .
