--- title: "On Halloween, a potentially dangerous asteroid the size of a building will fly past Earth's orbit." description: "The asteroid's upper size estimate is only slightly smaller than the tallest structure in the world." author: "Muskan Singh" published: 2022-10-31 canonical: https://www.mindstick.com/news/2258/on-halloween-a-potentially-dangerous-asteroid-the-size-of-a-building-will-fly-past-earth-s-orbit category: "space and research" tags: ["technology", "technology news", "space science", "research"] reading_time: 2 minutes --- # On Halloween, a potentially dangerous asteroid the size of a building will fly past Earth's orbit. Nearly the size of the world's tallest skyscraper, a [recently discovered](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/99433/what-is-the-name-of-the-recently-discovered-ancient-city-in-egypt-that-dates-back-over-3-000-years) '[potentially hazardous](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/115030/how-does-nasa-plan-to-detect-potentially-hazardous-near-earth-objects)' asteroid will pass by Earth just before [Halloween](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/111990/how-do-americans-celebrate-halloween), according to **NASA**. By cosmic standards, this margin is quite little. A **space object that passes within 120 million miles (193 [million km](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/38800/what-is-the-name-of-nasa-s-spacecraft-which-became-the-most-distant-solar-powered-explorer-in-space-at-a-distance-of-793-million-km-from-the-sun)) of Earth is defined by NASA as a 'near-Earth object,' as is any large body that is 4.65 million miles (7.5 million km) or closer and is considered 'potentially hazardous.'** Once these potential threats have been alerted, astronomers keep a close eye on them, using radar to seek for any signs that their predicted trajectories have changed, which might put them on a lethal [collision](https://yourviews.mindstick.com/view/83046/spacex-rocket-booster-collision-with-the-moon) course with Earth. The **diameter of the asteroid, designated 2022 RM4, is believed to be between 1,083 and 2,428 feet (330 and 740 metres), which is barely below the height of Dubai's Burj Khalifa,** the world's tallest [structure](https://www.mindstick.com/articles/23258/choose-your-business-structure-wisely) at 2,716 ft (828 m), the asteroid's diameter. According to NASA, it will fly by our globe at 68 times the speed of sound, or around 52,500 mph (84,500 km/h). On November 1, the asteroid will be around 1.43 million miles ([2.3 million](https://answers.mindstick.com/qa/36016/what-should-i-do-if-i-suddenly-have-2-3-million-dollars-net-from-a-lottery-winning) kilometres) from Earth at its closest approach, which is roughly six times the typical distance between Earth and the moon. **The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert Set (ATLAS), a system of four telescopes that can monitor the whole night sky in a single pass once every 24 hours, is used by NASA to track over 28,000** asteroids and identify their positions and orbits. These asteroid bits were fortunately tiny and unharmed. **NASA** has computed the anticipated paths of all the near-Earth objects to the end of the century. The good [news](https://www.mindstick.com/developersection/news) is that, according to NASA, **there is no known threat to Earth from an end-of-the-world asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years.** --- Original Source: https://www.mindstick.com/news/2258/on-halloween-a-potentially-dangerous-asteroid-the-size-of-a-building-will-fly-past-earth-s-orbit Copyright © MindStick Software Pvt. Ltd. This Markdown version is provided for developers, AI systems, and offline reading.