An asteroid as large as a 20-story building sailed uncomfortably close to Earth last week, zooming by our planet at roughly a quarter of the distance between Earth and the moon — and astronomers didn't notice it until two days later.
Now dubbed 2023 NT1, the roughly 200-foot-wide (60 meters) space rock sailed past our planet on July 13, traveling at an estimated 53,000 mph (86,000 km/h), according to NASA. However, because the rock flew toward Earth from the direction of the sun, our star's glare blinded telescopes to the asteroid's approach until long after it had passed.
Astronomers didn't catch wind of the building-size rock until July 15, when a telescope in South Africa — part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), an array of telescopes designed to spot asteroids several days to weeks before any potential impact — caught the rock making its exit from our neighborhood. More than a dozen other telescopes also spotted the rock shortly afterward, according to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.
Despite this surprise approach, asteroid 2023 NT1 isn't large enough to be considered a potentially hazardous object; after calculating the asteroid's trajectory for the next decade, astronomers say there's no imminent risk of an impact. In fact, recent research suggests that Earth is safe from asteroids — at least from large, extinction-inducing ones — for the next 1,000 years.
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