'Potentially hazardous' asteroid will narrowly fly past Earth just after Christmas

A massive asteroid is on its way towards the Earth and will come closest to our planet during the early hours of December 26. The United State's National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) is tracking the hazardous asteroid, snappily named 310442 (2000 CH59) and has said that the 2000ft space rock will approach Earth on boxing day.

According to NASA, the asteroid is travelling at an average speed of 25,000mph and will most likely retain its speed while passing through the Earth. 

Read: Large Asteroid To Fly By Earth On Dec 20, Everything You Need To Know

Massive asteroid to fly past Earth

The asteroid is as big as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and because of that, it has been labeled as a "potentially hazardous" asteroid by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

The asteroid can wipe out an entire city but fortunately, CNEOS had ruled out the possibility of a potential impact and said that it will just fly past the planet on December 26 at 3:54 am EDT. The closest the asteroid will come to planet Earth will be 19 times the distance between us and the moon. 

Read: Japan Spacecraft Starts Yearlong Journey Home From Asteroid

In September this year, two relatively smaller size asteroids flew safely past the Earth. NASA was tracking the asteroids, one since 2000 and other since 2010. NASA in a statement said that the near-earth asteroid 2010 C01, estimated to be 400 to 850 feet (120 to 260 meters) in size flew past Earth at 11:42 pm EDT on September 13, while the second object, 2000 QW7 which is estimated to be 950 to 2,100 feet (290 to 650 meters) in size flew past later at 7:54 pm EDT on September 14. 

Read: NASA: 2 Giant Asteroids As Big As Burj Khalifa To Skim Past Earth

In another case this year, NASA detected a tiny, harmless object that broke up in the atmosphere and impacted over the Caribbean sea on June 22, 2019. It was captured by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper instrument aboard GOES-16, an Earth-monitoring satellite operated by NOAA and NASA. The asteroid was only about 16 feet (5 meters) in size and was detected at 9:45 am on Saturday, June 22 by the University of Hawaii's ATLAS survey telescope on Maunaloa in Hawaii.

Read: Japan Spacecraft Releases Rover To Asteroid In Its Last Mission