Asteroid Twice the Size of The Burj Khalifa to Pass Earth This Month

Asteroid Twice the Size of The Burj Khalifa to Pass Earth This Month

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA — A large asteroid — named 231937 (2001 FO32), or simply 2001 FO32 — classified as "potentially hazardous" by NASA will zoom past Earth on March 21, according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies.

The asteroid is possibly travelling at or 124,000 kilometers per hour, or 77,000 miles per hour, according to the center's database.

Using data from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SpaceReference.org writes that the asteroid is probably between 0.767 kilometers to 1.714 kilometers in diameter, making it larger than 97 percent of all asteroids.

At 1.7 kilometers, which is roughly equal to 1.1 miles, it would be more than twice as tall as the world's tallest man-made structure, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

According to NASA's Asteroid Watch, it will pass Earth at a distance of 1.2 million miles, or more than 2 million kilometers, on March 21.

That's more than five times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.