Big, Shiny Asteroid to Fly (Safely) Past Earth on April 19

By Hanneke Weitering

A whopper of an asteroid will make a close approach to Earth on April 19. There’s no need to panic, though; NASA says it won’t collide with our planet. But it will get extremely close for an asteroid of that size.

Named 2014 JO25, this giant space rock measures approximately 2,000 feet (650 meters) across — about the height of the Shanghai Tower, China’s tallest building and the second-tallest building in the world. It will pass by Earth at a safe distance of 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or nearly five times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

“Small asteroids pass within this distance of Earth several times each week, but this upcoming close approach is the closest by any known asteroid of this size, or larger, since asteroid Toutatis, a 3.1-mile (five-kilometer) asteroid, which approached within about four lunar distances in September 2004,” NASA officials said in a statement.

Continue reading by clicking the name of the source below.