1,900-Foot 'Potentially Hazardous' Asteroid To Make Close Earth Approach In May

KEY POINTS

A giant asteroid taller than the Petronas Towers is set to zip past Earth on May 4
PHA 2021 AF8 is about 1,900 feet and is one-and-a-half times taller than the Empire State Building in New York
2021 AF8 has not been included in the ESA Risk List, so it should not be a cause for concern

A potentially hazardous asteroid taller than the Petronas Towers is making its way toward Earth. According to NASA, the 1,900-foot asteroid will be making its close approach in May.

At about 8:14 a.m. EDT on May 4, Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) 2021 AF8 will be making its close approach to the planet at a speed of about 20,000 miles per hour (32,400 km/h). NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) is keeping a close eye on the space object as it is expected to have a diameter reaching almost 2,000 feet.

A diameter this extensive would mean that the asteroid giant would be taller than the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia. Holding the record as the tallest buildings in the entire world until 2004, the two towers stand at a height of 1,483 feet (452 meters), according to The Measure of Things.

For those residing in New York, the asteroid is projected to be one-and-a-half times as tall as the Empire State Building. The tourist attraction has a height of 1,250 feet (381 meters).

New York's Empire State Building is lit with a white and red 'siren' to pay tribute to medical workers battling the coronavirus AFP / Johannes EISELE

Fortunately, PHA 2021 AF8 has not been included in the European Space Agency Risk List. Neither has the asteroid been included in the space agency's priority list, making it relatively safe to assume that the asteroid should not be a cause of concern.

PHA 2021 AF8 is an Apollo asteroid, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) stated. Asteroids of this type have Earth-crossing orbits -- this would mean that the PHA's orbit intersects with that of the Earth at a certain point, making close approaches more likely to occur.

According to CNEOS' Close Approach Data Table, 2021 AF8's closest possible approach to Earth could be about 2,087,000 miles away from the planet's surface. This distance is equal to 8.74 Lunar Distance (LD), as per justintools.com.

Otherwise known as Earth-Moon distance, Lunar Distance is a unit of measure used in astronomy and is the average distance between the home planet and the center of the moon. On average, 1 LD is equal to 238,000 Earth miles.