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As described by NASA, a potentially dangerous Asteroid 2020 QL2, bigger than two football fields is about to pass Earth on September 14, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
The space rock, known as asteroid 2020 QL2, a Near-Earth Object, is more than 120 meters in diameter. It is expected to pass close to Earth at 39,000 km per hour and approach 6.7 million km.
For comparison, the Moon is 385,000 km from Earth.
Asteroid 2020 QL2 is considered “potentially dangerous by NASA, given its size and proximity to Earth, although it has almost no chance of colliding with the planet at the moment.”
Potentially dangerous objects are defined as those that pass at a distance of less than 0.05 astronomical units ( 7.4 million km ) and are at least 140 meters in diameter, according to NASA. The 2020 Apollo-class QL2 passes the lower limit of this classification measuring between 120 and 140 meters.
There are more than 18,000 such objects in our solar system.
In August, an asteroid the size of a basketball court flew about 72,000 km from Earth, according to information from Asteroid Watch.