‘Potentially hazardous’ skyscraper-sized asteroid to zoom past Earth on Friday

A “potentially hazardous” asteroid about the size of a large skyscraper is predicted to zoom past the Earth at a distance of 1.7 million miles away from the planet on Friday, according to Nasa.

The space rock ranges in size between 210m (690 ft) to 480m (1,575 ft) – or about the size of the New York Empire State Building or a football stadium, Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies said.

The space rock will make a safe pass by Earth at about 7 times the distance between the planet and the Moon and at a speed of about 66,000kph (or 41,000mph), Nasa noted in a blog post.

It has been classified as “potentially hazardous” due to its size and proximity to Earth.

There are about 25,000 such asteroids with the potential to at least wipe out a complete city, known to astronomers so far.

Experts say the asteroid, named 2008 OS7 after the year when it was discovered, will not fly past Earth again until 2032 when it is expected to have a much farther approach.

It will at least be centuries before the asteroid makes another approach as close to Earth as on Friday.

The asteroid has a highly elliptical orbit, making its revolution around the Sun uneven.

Running simulations of the asteroid’s future path, researchers found that it will not be as close to Earth as on Friday for at least another 300 years.

Scientists are making strides in tracking and predicting the paths of asteroids.

Last week, researchers successfully detected an asteroid zooming toward the Earth, only hours before it entered the planet’s atmosphere.

The space rock, dubbed 2024 BXI, eventually burned up in the skies above Berlin into a harmless fireball – marking only the eighth time an asteroid has been spotted before it hit the Earth.

The asteroid was captured on camera by space enthusiasts and astronomers as it appeared and quickly disappeared in the skies above Berlin around 00:33 UT.

Fragments of the small asteroid dubbed 2024 BX1 were recovered around Berlin with more samples found over the weekend.