The asteroid, dubbed Asteroid 2018 FK5, will come flying by on an “Earth Close Approach” trajectory. The asteroid will arrive close to Earth late on Tuesday, October 1. US space agency NASA expects Asteroid FK5 to make an appearance around 11.56pm BST (10.56pm UTC). When this happens, the rock will shoot by at speeds of around 10.48km per second or 23,443mph (37,728kph).
What do we know about the Asteroid 2018 FK5?
The speedy asteroid was first observed flying around the solar system on March 28, 2018.
NASA has since calculated the object’s size, speed and trajectory based on a total of 33 observations.
The asteroid was determined to be a so-called Near-Earth Object or NEO.
All NEOs are comets and asteroids in the inner solar system that approach Earth from a close distance.
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Frequently, NEOs of varying sizes cross Earth’s orbit and sometimes they strike the planet head-on.
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.”
Asteroid FK5 is estimated to measure somewhere in the range of 19ft to 42ft (5.8 m to 13m) across.
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At the upper end of this scale, the asteroid is about as tall as Brachiosaurus dinosaur.
At the lower end of NASA’s estimate, the space rock is comparable in size to an adult giraffe.
If an object this small entered the atmosphere, it would safely burn up before striking the ground.
NASA said any object up to 82ft (25m) in diameter is unlikely to survive the fiery descent through the atmosphere.
Will asteroid FK5 hit the planet tomorrow night?
Despite its incredibly fast approach on Tuesday, the asteroid will not come close enough to strike.
At its closest, NASA predicts the asteroid will miss our home planet from a distance of about 0.03405 astronomical units (au).
A single astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the Sun – about 93 million miles (149.6 million km).
In other words, the asteroid will safely fly by from a distance of about 3.16 million miles (5.09 million km).
