Case in point: Another asteroid is primed to careen within what scientists call a “potentially hazardous†distance of the planet later this month, and the vast majority of humanity will have no idea.
It’s classified as a Near Earth Object (NEO), because of its relatively close distance to our planet, but the criteria is actually defined by a magnitude of millions, as NASA explains:.
By comparison, when Mars and Earth are at their closest, they are about 53 million kilometers (about 33 million miles) apart.
As far as this asteroid is concerned, it only orbits the sun every six years, and won’t return back to within a very close distance of Earth for another 65 years.