Massive and Potentially Dangerous Asteroid Will Approach Earth Tonight

On Tuesday night, an asteroid measuring between 20 and 60 feet long will pass within 1.1 million miles of Earth, NASA reported. The asteroid will not hit Earth, but it’s the second large space rock to pass this close to our planet in the past few weeks.

The asteroid, called 2017 YD7, is expected to pass by Earth at 7:40 p.m. ET, within 4.7 lunar distances (1.1 million miles from Earth). The asteroid also has an absolute magnitude of 27.3, a reference to its brightness. According to NASA, any space object that comes closer than 19.5 lunar distances is considered a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA), which means that 2017 YD7 easily falls into this category. Despite its scary categorization, this group of asteroids refers to how close the object comes to Earth, not the actual threat they pose for hitting our planet. In reality, PHAs are extremely common and most times we aren’t even aware of their existence. For example, according to AstroWatch, on January 1, there were 1,872 PHAs detected around Earth, none of which will actually hit us