Asteroid 2016 NF23 To Make A Close Approach To Earth On Wednesday

U.S. space agency NASA has confirmed that there’s no need to panic about the potentially hazardous asteroid which is claimed to be as big as Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza in size.

The asteroid, known as 2016 NF23, is expected to be between 230ft and 525ft in diameter. It will reportedly make a close approach to Earth on Wednesday, August 29.

NASA classifies Near-Earth objects (NEOs) or asteroids as potentially hazardous if they come within 4.6 million miles of Earth. Although the space agency has labeled the asteroid as potentially hazardous due to its shape and size, 2016 NF23 poses absolutely no threat to Earth as it is expected to pass within about 3 million miles from our planet.

Notably, 2016 NF23 will pass the earth by on Tuesday (Aug. 28) at 11:38 p.m. ET (3:38 UTC on Aug. 29). The asteroid will only be around 13 lunar distances from our planet — that’s the distance from the Moon to the Earth.

“There is absolutely nothing for concern by this pass of 2016 NF23,” Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters in Washington, told Space.com. “This object is merely designated a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) because its orbit over time brings it within 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit, but there is nothing hazardous to Earth or even unique about this pass of the asteroid.”

While there are other asteroids that’ll be even closer to us in the coming days, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has already announced in the past that they don’t expect any asteroid or comet to impact Earth within the next several hundred years.

“NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small,” the space agency noted. “In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”