NASA: 'Potentially Hazardous Asteroid' will cruise past Earth on Super Bowl Sunday

Show Caption Hide Caption NASA image shows us just how close the Earth and moon really are NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is on a mission to an asteroid, but on its way it gave us a snapshot of two things we Earthlings are very familiar with. Veuer's Josh King has the story (@abridgetoland).

An asteroid spanning one-third of a mile will hurtle past earth at some 76,000 mph on Super Bowl Sunday.

And while NASA calls the rocky mass known as 2002 AJ129 a "Potentially Hazardous Asteroid," fear not: It's not slated to crash into Earth.

"We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately," Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in a statement.

"Our calculations indicate that asteroid 2002 AJ129 has no chance — zero — of colliding with Earth on Feb. 4 or any time over the next 100 years."

So what makes the asteroid "potentially hazardous"? NASA uses a preset criteria to define such bodies. Any that come within 4,650,000 miles of Earth and measure more than 500 feet in diameter become categorized as "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids."

In fact, after providing the stats above, NASA revealed that next month's asteroid won't come closer than 2.6 million miles from our planet. That's roughly 10 times the distance between Earth and moon.

(An asteroid came just around 26,000 miles from hitting Earth last fall, for comparison.)

The Feb. 4 asteroid will come closest to the Earth at about 4:30 p.m. Eastern time — too soon for it to see the Patriots' Tom Brady crush the Eagles' souls.

NASA's Asteroid Watch account on Twitter went dark during Washington's shutdown over the weekend, but not before assuaging the fears of presumably terrified tweeters:

In response to several questions, asteroid 2002 AJ129 will safely pass Earth on Feb. 4. At closest approach, it will be at a distance of 2.6 million miles / 4.2 million km -- over 10 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. More: https://t.co/ZhYzOXRSfP pic.twitter.com/baJhxv2Dzj — Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) January 19, 2018

Follow Josh Hafner on Twitter: @joshhafner

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