An enormous asteroid more massive than two Empire State Buildings is heading our way, but unlike the so-called planet-killer comet in the recent movie “Don’t Look Up,” this space rock will zoom harmlessly past Earth.
The stony asteroid, known as (7482) 1994 PC1, will pass at its closest on Jan. 18 at 4:51 p.m. EST (2151 GMT), traveling at 43,754 mph (70,415 km/h) and hurtling past Earth at a distance of 0.01324 astronomical units — 1.2 million miles (nearly 2 million kilometers), according to NASA JPL-Caltech’s Solar System Dynamics (SSD).