Another gigantic asteroid will come close to Earth on Wednesday, and Earthlings will be able to watch it live online, knowing it is at a safe distance.

According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Asteroid Watch, an asteroid is considered potentially dangerous if it approaches Earth within 4.6 million miles of our planet and is larger than 500 feet.

Asteroid 2020 XR meets these criteria and is a potentially dangerous near-Earth object (NEO). The asteroid discovered in 2020 is expected to make an astronomically close approach early Wednesday, more than 1.37 million miles from our planet, more than five times the average distance to the moon.

Asteroid 2020

(NASA)

The asteroid is estimated to be between 980 and 2,300 feet long. If it’s somewhere in the middle of that estimate, it could be 1,200 feet, about the size of an American football stadium, according to NASA’s JPL.

The orbit of asteroid 2020

(NASA)

The Virtual Telescope Project will host a livestream showing asteroid 2020

How do we know that asteroid 2020 X will not hit Earth?

When astronomers discovered the asteroid four years ago, they briefly thought that the chance of a collision with Earth in 2028 was low, according to the European Space Agency.

“But by going back and finding the asteroid in older data, they were able to refine its trajectory and rule out any danger,” said Juan Luis Cano from ESA’s Planetary Defense Office.

Information on the close approach of asteroid 2020 XR from the European Space Agency.

(ESA)

Using these new calculations, astronomers were able to determine that asteroid 2020 XR has no chance of hitting Earth for at least the next 100 years.

This will not be the last object to approach Earth’s neighborhood. There are almost 40,000 NEOs and more than 2,300 were discovered in 2024 alone.