NASA’s asteroid trackers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have called it Asteroid 2019 BW1, after they first spotted the asteroid on January 25, 2019. Asteroid BW1 will approach the Earth from a distance of approximately 0.03332 astronomical units (au). One astronomical unit measures around 93 million miles (149.6 million km), which is the distance from the Sun to the Earth.
When will asteroid make Earth approach?
The JPL said the asteroid will reach its closest distance to Earth at 4.22pm GMT (UTC) today (Saturday, February 2).
It is believed BW1 is around 98.4ft to 219.8ft (30m to 67m) in diameter.
This is eight-times longer than a London double-decker bus and 30-times the length of a Queen Size bed.
How close will it get?
Asteroid BW1 will miss the Earth by more than three million miles (4.98 million km).
This means our planet will not be directly impacted.
The asteroid will instead just come close enough to be dubbed a “Near-Earth Object” (NEOs).
NEOs are comets and asteroids on orbital trajectories and get extremely close to the Earth.
NASA said: “As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth.
“Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.”
What are asteroids?
Asteroids are objects that are made of rock or metal and orbit the Sun.
They are said to be bigger than one metre (3 ft) in diameter.
Smaller objects that orbit the sun are called meteoroids.
The largest asteroid is Ceres, which measures up at 600 miles (965 km) across.
Dr Thomas Gernon, Associate Professor in Earth Science at Southampton University, said: “In the asteroid belt, fitting somewhere between Mars and Jupiter, space rocks sometimes collide.
“The break up of one or more asteroids will potentially generate lots of fragments, which over time can get nudged towards the Earth.
“Over time these rocks get bombarded by sunlight and there is a process which re-emits this energy, and gives these fragments a tiny nudge, which can then send them on a collisional path towards Earth.”