Don’t look up, an asteroid the size of Shanghai Tower is passing by…

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is keeping track of an Apollo-class asteroid categorised as both a NEO asteroid, and a PHA.

But don’t worry, this space rock – named 2014 QL433 – won’t be crashing our global party. It’s quite large, though, so let’s hope it keeps the course.

First, let’s talk size; more on the asteroid jargon later.

Asteroid 2014 QL433

This asteroid is roughly the same size as the Shanghai Tower in China, which I should mention is the the third tallest building in the world.

If this space rock was a building, you’d need to take 632 floors to reach the top.

But this asteroid is also a potential continental party-crasher, with an estimated impact force of 2 000 megatons.

In layman’s terms, that’s a really BIG boom that could cause devastation across a whole continent.

We’re safe, for now

NASA and its Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) have been watching and tracking this space rock to ensure we’re safe.

Asteroid 2014 QL433 was first spotted in August 2014 and has been observed enough to know its path won’t cause us any trouble.

It’s last recorded visit to our neck of the celestial woods was in August 2020, and it will again keep a respectable distance from Earth this time around.

In fact, it’s been darting around the Sun for a while now, getting as close as 88 million kilometers and as far away as 537 million kilometers.

Asteroid jargon

NEO, PHA, Apollo, what does it all mean? NEO stands for Near-Earth Object, meaning it orbits the Sun pretty close to Earth, within 50 million kilometers of our planet’s orbit.

PHA is short for Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, which is a rating defined on an asteroid’s threat to Earth, due to its zippy travel speed of 75,000 kilometers per hour.

All asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 au (approximately 7 479 894 kilometres) are considered PHAs.

And the Apollo class? That’s just a fancy way to categorise asteroids based on their orbits. In this case, it’s an object which orbits our Sun.

It could theoretically, at some point in its trajectory, intercept Earth’s orbit and cause all sorts of chaos for us, hence why it’s also classified as a PHA.