Santa Claus is not the only one flying over the Earth on Christmas Day.
An asteroid about 123 meters in size will pass through our planet according to NASA.
The giant space rock is officially called 501647 (2014 SD224) and travels at about 10 kilometers per second, or 36,000 kilometers per hour.
The good news is that there is no need to panic about destroying the Earth (it’s 2020!), It will stay at a very safe distance – 3,036,775 kilometers.
Near Earth topic
That said, NASA still considers it a near-Earth object (NEO).
NASA claims that Near-Earth Object (NEO) is driven by gravitational pull of nearby planets.
An object must come within 1.3 celestial units to be identified as NEO.
What is an asteroid?
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) defines asteroids as “rocky, airless debris left over from the early formation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago”.
The space authority estimates that there are approximately 1,031,488 of them to date.