Get ready for a celestial spectacle! This weekend, a skyscraper-sized asteroid will zoom past Earth, making a close approach that will bring it within three-quarters the average distance between our planet and the moon. The space rock, named 2024 MK, is estimated to measure about 480 feet (146 meters) across, which is greater than the height of a 40-story building. It will be traveling at a remarkable speed of roughly 21,000 mph (34,000 km/h) during its closest approach on Saturday, June 29.
Astronomers in South Africa discovered the asteroid on June 16. While the asteroid poses no immediate threat to Earth, NASA classifies it as a ‘potentially hazardous asteroid’ due to its large size and precarious orbit, which occasionally crosses that of our planet.
This close encounter is a reminder of the constant movement of celestial bodies in our solar system. Shortly after its close approach to Earth and the moon this weekend, 2024 MK will zoom back out toward the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It will not return to our neighborhood until 2037, according to NASA predictions. Rest assured, the space rock won’t pose any threat to our planet then, either.
NASA monitors the orbits of more than 30,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are space rocks that come within 120 million miles (195 million km) of the sun, often crossing Earth’s orbit during their travels. Currently, there are no known asteroids that pose a threat to our planet for at least the next 100 years.
The close approach of 2024 MK comes just days after an even larger asteroid called 2011 UL21 flew by Earth. Measuring between 1.1 and 2.4 miles (1.7 to 3.9 kilometers) wide, the mountain-size object flew by at 4.1 million miles (6.6 million km) from Earth, or about 17 times the distance to the moon. Despite this ample breathing room, 2011 UL21 was the largest asteroid to come that close to Earth in 110 years, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.
These back-to-back flybys fittingly precede World Asteroid Day, which is celebrated on June 30. That date is also the anniversary of the Tunguska event, in which a large asteroid or comet exploded over Siberia in 1908, demolishing an estimated 80 million trees in Siberia over 830 square miles (2,150 square kilometers).
