EUROPE: On Halloween, a scary 1.5 mile-wide (2.5km) asteroid is set to make a ‘close’ encounter with Earth.
The space rock, named 2015 TB145, will safely fly past our planet at 78,000mph (125,500km/h) at 310,000 miles (499,000km) away.
That’s around 1.3 times the distance between the Earth and the moon, allowing anyone with a telescope to see the event.
The ‘high velocity’ Halloween asteroid’s closest approach will take place on 11:14 a.m. ET (3:14 pm GMT) on October 31.
It will be the closest approach to Earth since July 2006 and scientists believe we probably won’t see another large asteroid come this close to the planet until 2027.
While there’s no danger to Earth, Nasa has described the asteroid as ‘hazardous’ as it comes 4,600,000 mile (7,403,00km) threshold of proximity to our planet.The asteroid was spotted by Nasa a fortnight ago, which is relatively short notice for the space agency.
‘The asteroid is on an extremely eccentric and a high inclination orbit,’ the space agency explained.
‘This is the closest approach by a known object this large until 1999 AN10 approaches within 1 lunar distance in August 2027’
Because of its erratic orbit, Nasa isn’t sure where it will go, but the space agency says it’s confident it will not hit Earth.
It comes just weeks after doomsdayers claimed the end of the world was nigh after Nasa revealed a giant asteroid is heading towards the planet.
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