NASA scientists are tracking a massive asteroid that will fly by Earth this Halloween on Oct. 31, according to WKRN News 2.
The celestial event, which was discovered on Oct. 10, 2015, will be the closest currently known approach by an object this large.
Asteroid 2015 TB145 will be about 300,000 miles from Earth at its closest distance, NASA says.
“The close approach of 2015 TB145 at about 1.3 times the distance of the moon’s orbit, coupled with its size, suggests it will be one of the best asteroids for radar imaging we’ll see for several years,” said Lance Benner, of JPL, who leads NASA’s asteroid radar research program. “We plan to test a new capability to obtain radar images with two-meter resolution for the first time and hope to see unprecedented levels of detail.”
Don’t expect to see the giant rock with the naked eye, though.
Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said it’s expected to be fairly faint.
“Earth observes would need at least a small telescope to view it,” Chodas added.
NASA says the gravitational influence of the asteroid is so small it will have no detectable effect on the moon or anything on Earth.