A friendly neighborhood asteroid named 216 NF23, which is said to be a little larger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, is speeding through the solar system at 20,000 mph.
The asteroid caused a stir earlier this week when a trajectory showed the object coming pretty damn close to Earth. NASA classifies the asteroid as “potentially hazardous” but 2016 NF23 poses no such threat at this time.
The object will pass within about 3 million miles from our planet––a pretty safe distance we’d say. This will occur Wednesday, August 29th in the early hours of the day. For comparison. the International Space Station is 250 miles away and the moon is nearly 250,000 miles away. Most geostationary communications satellites are at 60,000 miles away.
NASA says that the visitor isn’t uncommon and its size is nothing to write home about. The agency is currently tracking of 1,912 “potentially hazardous” asteroids in our solar system.
