Huge asteroid twice the size of Burj Khalifa set to crash into Earth's orbit this week

dailystar.co.uk:

orbit this Friday. Measuring a whopping 1.1 miles (1.8km) in diameter the asteroid, named 7335 (1989 JA), has been classed as "potentially hazardous" by NASAHowever, despite the classification, NASA has said it's extremely unlikely to pose a threat to our planet, passing by at a distance of about 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometres) - nearly 10 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon.The asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth at 14:26 UTC (15.26 GMT) on Friday, according to NASA's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks space rocks, travelling at roughly 29,348 miles/hour.According to NASA, 7335 (1989 JA) will be the largest space rock to pass Earth this year.NASA discovers around 30 new "near-Earth objects" (NEOs) every week, and at the start of 2019 had discovered a total of more than 19,000 objects.However, the space agency has warned its NEO catalogue isn't complete, meaning an unpredicted impact could occur at "any time".

NASA explained: "Experts estimate that an impact of an object the size of the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 – approximately 55 feet (17 meters) in size – takes place once or twice a century. '"Impacts of larger objects are expected to be far less frequent (on the scale of centuries to millennia)."However, given the current incompleteness of the NEO catalogue, an unpredicted impact – such as the Chelyabinsk event – could occur at any time."To help prepare for such an impact, NASA recently launched its first ever "planetary defence" spacecraft to deflect an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth.The $325m (£240m) Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched in November 2021, and will take 10 months to complete its almost seven.