Closest Encounter in a Century: ‘City Killer’ Asteroid Nears Earth, Live Stream Available

Today, on February 2, a colossal asteroid, colloquially referred to as a “city killer,” is set to make its closest approach to Earth in over a century. This football stadium-sized space rock, known as 2008 OS7, measures approximately 890 feet (271 meters) in diameter. It will pass by our planet at a safe distance of about 1.77 million miles (2.85 million kilometers), over seven times farther away than the moon orbits Earth, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

To observe this celestial event, The Virtual Telescope Project will provide a live stream starting at 1:00 p.m. ET on Feb. 2. This asteroid, with a size comparable to half that of asteroid Bennu (visited and sampled by NASA) and substantially smaller than the Vredefort meteor, the largest space rock to impact Earth, is considered “potentially hazardous” due to its size and proximity to Earth, even though it poses no threat of impact, as per JPL predictions.

If this asteroid were to collide with Earth, it could have catastrophic consequences for a large city like New York. Nevertheless, it falls short of being classified as a “planet killer” asteroid, akin to the Vredefort meteor or the celestial body that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

NASA has identified approximately 25,000 potentially hazardous asteroids, with one such threat expected every 20,000 years. The elliptical orbit of 2008 OS7 results in significant variations in its distance from Earth during close approaches. While it was over 55.9 million miles (90 million km) away shortly after its discovery in 2008, today’s approach brings it within a proximity of about 30 times that distance.

Despite direct observations of this asteroid’s flybys only occurring twice before, JPL has simulated every close approach since 1900 and predicted future encounters until 2198. Notably, there is no other instance in this almost 300-year dataset where the asteroid is expected to be closer to Earth than on Feb. 2, 2024.

Recent weeks have seen other close encounters with asteroids, including an airplane-sized one passing within 220,000 miles (354,000 km) on Jan. 27 and the detection of a child-sized asteroid just three hours before it exploded over Germany on Jan. 21.