A huge asteroid passed by Earth on Thursday. But you can remain calm.
Asteroid 1999 FN53, a 1-kilometer-across space rock, flew by Earth at a distance of about 6.3 million miles (10 million km) Thursday morning at 7:25 a.m. ET, marking its closest approach with the planet in more than 100 years, NASA experts say.
This “close approach” isn’t something to freak out about, though. The large space rock poses no threat to the planet.
"This is a flyby in the loosest sense of the term," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. "We can compute the motion of this asteroid for the next 3,000 years and it will never be a threat to Earth.”
A slew of incorrect reports suggested there was cause to worry about the 1999 FN53, but the space rock already made its close pass with Earth.
And we're all still here.
Asteroid 1999 FN53 will safely pass Earth May 14 by over 6 million miles. It poses absolutely no threat. http://t.co/IRa6LTnaOW— Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) May 14, 2015
Astronomers are constantly tracking other solar system bodies in Earth’s neighborhood. Since May 10, for example, six other objects have harmlessly passed by the planet without incident, according to a running list of cosmic close approaches updated by the Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts.
Asteroids are categorized as PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) by the space agency only when their orbits bring them within 4.7 million miles of Earth.
If a 1-km-long asteroid were to impact Earth, it could be potentially devastating to the planet, scientists have said. But Asteroid 1999 FN53 passed by the planet at about 26 times the distance from Earth to the moon.
NASA estimates that scientists have found and tracked more than 90% of near-Earth objects that are 1 kilometer in size or greater.