NASA has issued a warning about a colossal Christmas Eve asteroid due to make a close encounter with Earth tonight. The celestial body, comparable in size to a ten-story building, is expected to hurtle past our planet at a staggering speed of 14,743 miles per hour. NASA's Eyes on Asteroids tool says the space rock, dubbed 2024 NX1, measures an average estimated diameter of 47.42 metres.
As of 10.15am this morning, the asteroid was recorded to be 1.51 astronomical units from Earth, with one AU equating to 92,955,807 miles. The asteroid will reach its nearest point to Earth at 02.56 am GMT during the early hours of Christmas Eve. NASA classifies Near-Earth objects as asteroids and comets whose orbits come within 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) of the Sun, allowing them to pass through the vicinity of Earth's orbit. The agency said: "Most near-Earth objects are asteroids that range in size from about 10 feet (a few meters) to nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers) across.
"The orbit of each object is computed by finding the elliptical path through space that best fits all the available observations, which often span many orbits over many years or decades. As more observations are made, the accuracy of an object's orbit improves dramatically, and it becomes possible to predict where an object will be years or even decades into the future – and whether it could come close to Earth.".
