The ‘Potentially Hazardous’ AJ129 And The History Of Super Bowl Asteroids

For superstitious fans, an asteroid due to zip by Earth on Super Bowl Sunday might be a good omen — or a terrible one — for their favorite team.

Asteroid 2002 AJ129 might come as close as 2.6 million miles from our planet on the afternoon of Feb. 4, soaring through the sky at about 76,000 miles per hour shortly before the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles kick off their championship game.

The space rock has been classified as a “potentially hazardous” object because that’s the title all rocks earn when they are at least 500 feet long and come within 4.6 million miles of Earth. The potentially hazardous group is part of the larger category of near-Earth objects, the variety of comets and asteroids that approach within 120 million miles of us.

But NASA has stressed that there is no chance this asteroid, AJ129, will crash into our world during the Super Bowl, or at any point in the next century.

AJ129 is between 0.3 miles and 0.75 miles across and is traveling at more than 21 miles a second.

It won't be the first time an asteroid has passed close to Earth on the day of the Super Bowl.

On the morning of the very first championship on Jan. 15, 1967, between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers, the asteroid 2011 AH5 streaked past. That rock, which is still floating around space somewhere, is somewhere between 55 feet and 125 feet long, according to a log of near-Earth objects that NASA keeps.

During the previous Super Bowl between the Patriots and the Eagles, on Feb. 6, 2005, which New England won, there was no known near-Earth object zooming by. For the more superstitious types, the change in cosmic circumstances this time around could have them expecting a different final score and a different NFL champion.

The Super Bowl with the most recorded flybys in NASA’s near-Earth object log is Super Bowl 50, the 2016 contest in which the Denver Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers. The Center for Near Earth Object Studies has eight recorded close approaches for that day.

Including the upcoming championship, there are 20 Super Bowls that have had a close approach from a near-Earth object. The Patriots-Eagles matchup will make for the eighth championship with multiple objects recorded as passing near Earth.

Before AJ129 rushes through, three much smaller objects will go by. Although the tiniest of them, 2018 AH12, which is only between about 35 and 70 feet long, will be half the distance of AJ129, the others will be significantly farther away.

But just because NASA has not recorded the presence of an asteroid or another potentially hazardous object does not mean it does not exist — it’s entirely possible that asteroids have passed by on other dates through Super Bowl history but were not detected.