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Next week, a relatively small asteroid — one thought to be no larger than 98 feet across — will venture extremely close to our planet, passing between Earth and the moon. Known as asteroid 2019 SP3, the space rock was discovered exactly one week ago and is expected to skim Earth closer than the moon on Thursday, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced yesterday.
The asteroid flyby comes just three days after another, slightly smaller 95-foot asteroid will shoot past Earth at a little over two times the distance to the moon.
First spotted on September 22, asteroid 2019 SP3 has been kept under a close watch by the JPL over the past week. After gauging out its orbit around the sun, the JPL team classified the rock as a near-Earth object (JPL) and established it to be an Apollo-type asteroid.