4,500-foot-wide asteroid approaches Earth this weekend, NASA says

This weekend, an asteroid that NASA considers potentially dangerous will approach relatively close to Earth.

On August 21 at around 11:10 a.m. EDT, the asteroid named 2016 AJ193, estimated to have a diameter of about 4,500 feet, will pass above Earth at over 58,000 miles per hour. NASA has classified the asteroid as potentially dangerous. However, the asteroid will actually pass through Earth about nine times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has classified more than 27,000 near-Earth asteroids as of August 15. CNEOS says that about 1,000 of these near-Earth asteroids are larger than 3,280 in diameter. As for 2016 AJ193, its orbit calculates at a flyby of the Earth about every six years. CNEOS specifies on its website that “the threat to a person from traffic accidents, disease, other natural disasters and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from Near Earth Objects.“

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