Surprise! Tonight, an asteroid the size of two football fields is heading straight for Earth.

Astronomers just discovered the sneaky asteroid on July 26.

In the early hours of Thursday, an asteroid larger than two football fields will fly by Earth (Aug. 4). The asteroid will pass around 12:23 in the morning (ET).

The asteroid 2022 OE2 was very recently found by NASA scientists on July 26. Between 557 and 1,246 feet (170 and 380 meters) broad, or nearly twice as large as an American football field, is how huge the meaty space rock is thought to be. As previously reported by Live Science, astronomers have also determined that 2022 OE2 is an asteroid of the Apollo class, which implies it circles the sun and passes through the route of Earth’s orbit. (About 15,000 such asteroids are known to astronomers.)

This massive of an asteroid might crash and produce energy equivalent to 1,000 nuclear bombs. However, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA predicts that this one will miss Earth by a wide margin.
More than 13 times the typical distance between Earth and the moon, or 3.2 million miles (5.1 million kilometers), is how close the asteroid 2022 OE2 is expected to approach Earth. For comparison, the asteroid 2022 NF passed by Earth on July 7 at a distance of about 56,000 miles (90,000 km), or roughly 23 percent of the average distance between Earth and the moon.

Like this one, tens of thousands of other near-Earth objects are seen by NASA, and their future courses have all been predicted. The good news is that according to NASA, Earth won’t be in risk of a catastrophic asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years.

However, astronomers are aware that a little shift in trajectory, which might be brought on by a minor asteroid collision or a planet’s gravitational pull, may modify a massive asteroid’s orbit and put it on a potentially disastrous track for Earth.

As a result, space agencies are quite serious about planetary defense. NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, an asteroid-deflecting mission, in November 2021. In fall 2022, a spacecraft will collide with the 525-foot-wide (160 m) asteroid Dimorphos. The asteroid won’t be destroyed by the impact, although Live Science previously claimed that the space rock’s orbital route may be somewhat altered. The mission will assist in evaluating the effectiveness of asteroid deflection should a space rock represent an immediate threat to our planet in the future.

Originally published on Live Science.

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