An asteroid twice the size of a giraffe is due to pass closer to our planet than the moon today.
The asteroid, named 2024 XH, is roughly 39 feet in diameter according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), though it may be anywhere between 30 feet and 69 feet across, according to JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. In comparison, an average male giraffe grows to around 16 to 18 feet tall.
2024 XH is expected to soar past us at a distance of 207,000 miles, coming closer than our moon's 238,900-mile orbit. It will travel at a mind-boggling speed of 24,800 mph, several times faster than even the fastest of bullets.
Most asteroids in our solar system are found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
"Asteroids are 'bits of a planet that didn't happen' that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. However, as they are relatively small, asteroids can be disturbed quite easily, so they can develop orbits that cross those of planets," Jay Tate, the director of the U.K.'s Spaceguard Centre observatory, previously told Newsweek.
Asteroids like 2024 XH that travel within about 120 million miles of the sun, or 30 million miles of Earth, are known as Near-Earth Objects or NEOs. NEOs that are larger than 460 feet in diameter and also come within 4.6 million miles of Earth's orbit are classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) or potentially hazardous objects (PHOs).
"Asteroids and comets with a perihelion distance (closest to the sun) less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU), or approximately 120 million miles/194 million km, are called NEOs," Svetla Ben-Itzhak, an assistant professor of space and international relations at Johns Hopkins University, previously told Newsweek.
"Astronomers consider an NEO a threat if it has an Earth minimum orbit intersection distance of 0.05 AU (around 4.7 million miles or 7.5 million km) or less and is at least 140 meters [460 feet] in diameter. Those are known as PHOs."
NASA keeps an eye on around 36,000 NEOs and roughly 2,350 PHAs.
There also is an Empire State Building-sized PHA, named 2020 XR, approaching the Earth this week, coming within 1,370,000 miles of our planet.
"The potentially hazardous asteroid 2020 XR (diameter: about 450 meters) will come close to us, reaching a minimum distance from the center of the Earth of about 2.2 million km, about 5.7 times the average lunar distance. A similar event happens once a year on average. Of course, no risks at all for our planet," Gianluca Masi, founder and scientific director of The Virtual Telescope Project, told Newsweek.
Despite their scary-sounding classification, no PHA poses any real risk to Earth, with NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office stating that "no known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years."
"The potentially hazardous designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid's orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for NEO Studies, previously told Newsweek.
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