The hefty asteroid, named 2013 NK4, is around 2,000 feet (610 meters) wide, making it about twice the size of the "god of chaos" asteroid Apophis, which will make a superclose approach to Earth in 2029, EarthSky reported .
The space rock made its closest approach to Earth at 10:50 a.m. EDT Monday (April 15), when it reached around 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) from our planet, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) . At the time, it was traveling at around 37,000 mph (59,000 km/h).
The asteroid is big enough to destroy a large city and cause serious environmental impacts if it were to smash into Earth. According to NASA's calculations, the space rock will likely never get anywhere near impacting Earth. However, due to its size and proximity to our planet, it is still considered a potentially hazardous asteroid .
While the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, its close approach is still of great interest to astronomers, who are currently tracking the space rock with radio telescopes. They hope to capture specialized radar images, known as delay-Doppler images, which should help shed more light on the asteroid's size and shape.
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