A massive asteroid will pass Earth next week. At the beginning of next month, a large “potentially hazardous asteroid” is expected to swing less than six lunar distances from Earth.
The asteroid, known as 2022 RM4, is expected to pass by Earth on November 1 at a distance of about 1.5 million miles.
The asteroid’s diameter is estimated to be between 330 and 740 meters, or up to over 2,400 feet, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.
A “near-Earth object” is any space object that comes within 120 million miles of the sun. Any large body within 4.6 million miles of Earth is referred to as a “potentially hazardous asteroid.”
Such asteroids have a larger orbit around the sun than Earth, and their path intersects Earth’s.
2002 RM4 orbits the Sun every 1,397 days, and its path crosses Earth’s orbital path around the Sun on occasion. According to NASA, there is no known threat from an asteroid collision for at least the next century.
Furthermore, the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft recently deviated the non-hazardous asteroid Dimorphous.