A probably hazardous asteroid spanning the size of the Washington Monument will make a secure, shut method to Earth on Sept. 18 and you may watch the flyby dwell on-line courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project.
2025 FA22’s subsequent flyby of Earth will happen at 3:42 a.m. EDT (0742 GMT) on Sept. 18, when the asteroid will move 523,206 miles (842018 kilometers) from our planet — the equal to round 2.2 lunar distances — posing zero threat to us, or the moon.
Stargazers can tune in to the Virtual Telescope Project’s YouTube stream starting at 11 p.m. EDT on Sept. 17 (3:00 GMT Sept. 18) to see dwell views from the group’s robotic telescopes situated in Italy because the asteroid approaches its minimal distance to Earth.
The 427-951-foot-wide (130-290 meters-meter-wide (427-951 ft) asteroid 2025 FA22 was discovered in March earlier this year by the Pan-STARRS wide-field imaging facility. The wandering solar system body was later classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) owing to its size/brightness and orbit, which give it the potential to one day make a threateningly close approach to Earth.
“While, we repeat, this is a safe approach, it is still remarkable: a similar close encounter, involving an object of that size coming that close, happens one time every ten years on average, accordingly to JPL Center for NEO Studies,” wrote Virtual Telescope Institute founder Gianluca Masi in a blog post saying the livestream.
Following the shut move, 2025 FA22 will proceed its 668-day looping path by way of the internal photo voltaic system that takes it properly past the orbit of Mars.
NASA estimates that an asteroid the dimensions of 2025 FA22 strikes our planet simply as soon as each 20,000 years and creates an impression crater measuring as much as 1.3 miles (2.1 km) in diameter.