NASA has confirmed that two massive asteroids will pass by Earth on Friday in what it calls a “close approach” — though scientists stress there’s no danger of impact.
Both space rocks are big enough to cause serious regional damage if they were to hit, but they’ll instead sail past at millions of miles away.
The first, designated (2025 OJ1), measures about 300 feet across — roughly the height of a 30-story building. It will come within 3.2 million miles of our planet, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object tracking system.
Trailing it is 2019 CO1, a slightly smaller asteroid at around 200 feet wide, about the length of a Boeing 747. It’s expected to pass at a distance of 4.24 million miles.
Both are moving at extremely high speeds, and while neither poses a threat, their back-to-back arrival on the same day has added some cosmic drama to what would normally be a routine occurrence.
“These are not rare events, but seeing two sizable asteroids making flybys within hours of each other is certainly unusual,” NASA experts note.
The agency’s Planetary Defence Coordination Office has been monitoring both objects for years using advanced telescopes and tracking systems that keep tabs on thousands of near-Earth objects.
Can you see them?
Unfortunately, the asteroids will be too far away to spot with the naked eye. Astronomers, however, will be training powerful telescopes on them to study their speed, composition, and orbital paths — information that could prove vital in planetary defence research.
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