WASHINGTON (TND) — It's wider than the world's tallest building, it's "potentially dangerous", and it's heading towards Earth!
Well, actually it's expected to safely pass the planet, but one asteroid is making headlines for its expected visit.
NASA projects the asteroid, named 7482 (1994 PC1), will fly by Earth on Jan. 18.
On that day, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believes the large space-faring rock will come within 1,231,184 miles of the planet. For reference, the moon is only about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers) away from the Earth, on average.
Estimations measure the asteroid to be roughly 1 kilometer (3280 feet) wide, which is hundreds of feet taller than the world's tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which sits at 2716.5 feet tall in the United Arab Emirates.
This particular asteroid has been monitored since its discovery in August 1994. It is an "Apollo" asteroid, according to NASA, which means its orbit crosses Earth's.
Due to what NASA says is its "potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth," the asteroid has been classified as "potentially hazardous".
Of course, there are millions of asteroids that fly by Earth all the time. NASA tracks approaches and, for example, three asteroids flying by on Jan. 12 were the sizes of a bus, a house, and an airplane.
According to CBS News, Nancy Chabot, a chief planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, says there are about 25,000 Apollo asteroids which are at least 500-feet wide which could be "devastating" if they collide with Earth.
We're actually not talking, like, global extinction event, but regional devastation on the area that could wipe out a city or even a small state," Chabot reportedly says. "And so it is a real concern. It is a real threat.
But for those worried about a "global extinction event" like the ones featured in films like 1998's "Armageddon" or Netflix's "Don't Look Up", you should know NASA already has been working on solutions.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission was launched in November with the express intent to demonstrate the ability to redirect incoming asteroids.
"DART’s target asteroid is NOT a threat to Earth. This asteroid system is a perfect testing ground to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future," NASA says.
NASA considers monitoring asteroids which have the potential to be threats to Earth to be one of its primary focuses.