Asteroid twice the size of Burj Khalifa to fly past Earth on January 18

ITAHARI: JAN. 18 – A huge asteroid bigger than the size of Burj Khalifa is set to fly past Earth at a 1,230,000-mile distance on January 18. The asteroid 7482, also known as 1994 PC1, is about 1.6 km wide and has been categorized by US space agency Nasa as a “potentially hazardous object” due to its relative proximity to the Earth while shooting past.

Nasa identifies asteroids as potentially hazardous if the asteroids are more than about 140 meters in size with orbits that bring them as close as within 4.6 million miles of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. It is also a Near-Earth Object since it is closer than 1.3au astronomical units, a little over the distance between the Earth and the Sun. One au is the equivalent of 93 million miles.