An asteroid roughly the size of Dubai's Burj Khalifa is en-route to rush past Earth on Halloween, according to NASA.
The recently-discovered asteroid was spotted by NASA's Astroid Terrestrial-impact Laser Alert System (ATLAS) and dubbed 2022 RM4. The ATLAS system performs a full scan of the night sky every 24 hours and has been able to track the trajectories of over 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets.
Near-Earth objects are defined by NASA as any large body within 7.5 million kilometers of earth. Once identified, these bodies are closely monitored by astronomers for any indication of a deviation from projected trajectories that could constitute a threat to Earth.
A close call
2022 RM4 is estimated by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to have a diameter of between 330 and 740 meters. The Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, stands at 828 meters tall.
The closest it will get to Earth will be on Nov. 1, approximately 2.3 million kilometers away- this is around six times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. In terms of the vastness of outer space, this is like passing someone on a two-lane highway.