With this story, the headlines around the internet aren’t all “OMG AN ASTEROID”, but they could have been. On Friday, May 27, one good-sized chunk of rock is going to pass pretty close to the Earth, but not so close you can see it with your unaided eyes.

And when we say close approach, we mean that asteroid 1989 JA will be at its closest at about four million kilometers away, or ten times the distance to the Moon. Granted, it’s going to be the largest asteroid to come close-ish to Earth this year, measuring about a kilometer across. If 1989 JA were to hit Earth, yes, that would be devastating. After all, the small body is traveling at nearly 50,000 kilometers per hour.

Or as our friend Franck Marchis of the SETI Institute notes: To provide some context, that is 17 times the speed of a bullet through the air. At this speed, the asteroid could travel around the planet Earth in 45 minutes.

Once again, 1989 JA is not going to hit Earth or even pass all that close. And this is the closest the asteroid will get for the next 172 years, so we can probably forget about it after Friday… until the next potentially hazardous asteroid makes headlines.

More Information

Largest asteroid to approach Earth in 2022 will zoom past our planet this week (USA Today)