SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — An asteroid about the size of the Golden Gate Bridge whizzed past the earth on Tuesday.
At its closest approach, the asteroid was about 1.2 million miles away from our planet, according to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The asteroid is named ‘7482 (1994 PC1)’ and people were able to track its path towards (and away from) Earth through NASA’s asteroid watch map.
The near-Earth asteroid passed by safely around 1:50 p.m. PT, according to NASA.
The space rock “is very well known and has been studied for decades” by NASA’s planetary defense experts, the agency said.
According to NASA, an asteroid is a mostly rocky object that formed closer to the sun than Jupiter. They’re “remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago.” Most asteroids tend to be much, much smaller in mass than Earth’s moon.
There are over one million asteroids that scientists know of in the solar system.