An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building will approach Earth next week, scientists: harmless!

JAKARTA - In the next few weeks, several large asteroids, and one of which is almost the size of the Empire State Building will approach Earth. According to data from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, even though it's close, it usually doesn't pose a real threat to our planet.

"Astronomically, it's close to Earth. But in human terms, they're millions of miles away and can get no closer than millions of miles away", said Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

One of the closest approaches is Asteroid 2021 TJ15, which will pass Earth on Saturday. The distance of this asteroid is exactly from the Moon to Earth or the equivalent of 238,854 miles.

"The asteroid is 5.6 to 13 meters (18 to 42 feet) in diameter. It's a small asteroid that is the distance from the Moon to Earth. It's still very far away, can't hit Earth, there's no possibility", Chodas said.

Meanwhile, citing ABC News, Monday, October 18, another asteroid called Asteroid 2004 UE, which is estimated to measure up to 1246 feet, or approximately the same as the Empire State Building will make its closest approach on November 13, with a distance of about 2.6 million miles from Earth.

That equates to more than 11 times the Moon's distance from Earth. Asteroid 2004 UE is considered to be of medium size. Most asteroids considered near-Earth are small or medium in size, ranging in size from about 984 feet to 1968 feet. Near-Earth asteroids that are considered large can measure up to 3280 feet or larger.

Scientists who track near-Earth asteroids show that there are very few large asteroids near our planet. In fact, very few medium and large asteroids have approached Earth in the first place.

"There are relatively few large asteroids. The largest near-Earth asteroids are about 10 kilometers long. But there are only one or two of them", Chodas said.

Chodas added asteroids were found through observatories, cameras, telescopes, and asteroid surveys that looked for movement in the night sky. Once an asteroid is found, NASA's center tracks its measurements and location and calculates its orbital trajectory to predict its future movement to see if there's a chance it will come into contact with Earth. However, how often will the asteroid eventually hit Earth?

"Over the last 20 years of doing this, we have a total of four small asteroids, which have been observed in space and headed towards Earth. Those asteroids have also impacted the atmosphere and burned up. They became a bright fireball in every case", explains Chodas.

"In two cases, we predicted where they were going to hit beforehand and estimated where to find the meteorite. The expedition was done and found the meteorite. So our math works pretty well."

Meanwhile, recently NASA's newest asteroid probe, Lucy, took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Later, Lucy will undergo a 12-year mission to study several asteroids known as Trojans around Jupiter.

Lucy will be the first spacecraft to visit this asteroid, in hopes of helping scientists learn more about how the planets of our Solar System formed and how they ended up in their current configuration.