The space rock known as 1998 HL1 will flyby Earth at 18.21 BST tomorrow, zooming by at a staggering 25,000mph. NASA has said the asteroid could be up to 900 metres in length, meaning it easily dwarfs the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building on Earth which stands at 830 metres. The asteroid will pass by Earth at a distance of 6.2 million kilometres, but that is enough to make NASA sit up and notice, and class it as “potentially hazardous”.
The space agency said: “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
“Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au or less are considered PHAs.”
Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, head of the Virtual Telescope in Italy, said: “It’s a remarkable distance.
“Its passage is expected at a close distance, but completely safe.
“Thanks to the size of the asteroid, and to the relatively modest distance from the Earth that it will reach in the coming days it will be possible to observe it also with small amateur telescopes, with a diameter of 200 millimetres or superior, appreciating the movement among the stars”.
While the chances of a major asteroid hitting Earth are small – NASA believes there is a one in 300,000 chance every year that a space rock which could cause regional damage will hit – the devastating prospect is not impossible.
This is why there are now plans in the pipeline which could help Earth from asteroids.
NASA is currently studying Asteroid Bennu, where its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft arrived last year.
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Part of the reason NASA is sending the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft there is to gather more information about the space rock which is 500 metres in length.
NASA fears that the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out a country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
But NASA reiterates that while there is a small chance Earth could be impacted, “over millions of years, of all of the planets, Bennu is most likely to hit Venus.”
The ESA has invested £21million in projects such as the Human Exploration Research Analog (Hera) mission, which will study the Didymos binary asteroid, set to fly past Earth in 2022.
Studies such as Hera will help the ESA better understand how it can protect our planet from killer asteroid strikes.