NASA warns a HUGE asteroid the size of a commercial jet will skim past Earth tomorrow at blistering speeds of over 28,000mph

An asteroid the size of a commercial jet plane will skim past Earth tomorrow, NASA has warned.

The 38-metre (124ft) space rock will make an exceptionally close pass of our planet at blistering speeds over 28,000 miles per hour (45,000 km/h).

At its closest point, the asteroid will be just 135,465 miles (218,009 kilometres) from the surface of Earth.

That is just over half the distance between Earth and the Moon.

The asteroid, dubbed 2025 QD8, will make its pass of Earth at 15:56 BST tomorrow afternoon.

At almost 40 metres in diameter, this chunk of debris has the potential to be a ‘city killer’ if it were to collide with the planet.

However, scientists say there is no reason to be worried.

According to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), 2025 QD8 will harmlessly whizz past Earth, without any risk of collision.

Following its discovery earlier this year, the asteroid 2025 QD8 was spotted by a group of amateur astronomers from the Virtual Telescope Project.

Using a 17-inch telescope, the astronomers managed to capture an image of 2025 QD8 while it was 2.4 million miles (3.9 million km) from Earth.

This confirmed that the asteroid is between 17 and 38 metres (55-125 feet) wide, and is travelling directly towards Earth.

The size of the asteroid is an estimate based on the amount of light reflecting off its surface, which means that measurements cannot be entirely certain.

If the asteroid is made of a particularly dark or unreflective material, then it could be nearer to the higher end of the estimate range or potentially even larger.

However, even at the lower end of its estimated range, the asteroid still carries a huge destructive potential.

Dr Shyam Balaji, an astrophysicist from King’s College London, told Daily Mail: ‘It could cause significant local effects, though not global devastation.’

In 2013, an 18-metre (59ft) meteor exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, near the border with Kazakhstan.

The resulting explosion was 30 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, producing a shockwave that travelled twice around the world.

Directly beneath the explosion, 28 miles (45km) above the ground, the heat was so intense that people were left with burns and retinal damage.

Around 1,500 people were injured and over 3,600 homes were damaged, even though only 0.05 per cent of the original rock made it to the ground.

With a potential size up to 38 metres in diameter, 2025 QD8 has the potential to be even more destructive – possibly even ranking it as a ‘city killer’ size asteroid.

Dr Balaji adds: ‘Larger examples, like the Tunguska event in 1908, flattened thousands of square kilometres of forest.

‘An impact over a populated area could therefore be serious, but events of this scale remain rare.’

However, although the asteroid will pass extremely close to the planet, it poses no threat whatsoever to Earth.

Thanks to careful study by the network of planetary defence telescopes, astronomers are able to make very precise calculations of asteroids’ orbits.

This means we know with a very high level of certainty that 2025 QD8 will not hit Earth or the moon.

Although NASA and ESA have detected tens of thousands of near-earth objects, calculations show it is highly unlikely that a dangerous asteroid will hit Earth in the next 100 years.

Unfortunately, despite its close passage, the asteroid won’t be visible to the naked eye. 

‘It will be far too faint, and even telescopes would need to be well-equipped and precisely aimed,’ says Dr Balaji.

However, budding astronomers will still have an opportunity to watch this close encounter.

The Virtual Telescope Project will host a free live stream of the asteroid’s passage, starting from midnight tonight, which you can watch at this link.

The live stream will feature views of the approaching asteroid gathered by the group’s suite of robotic telescopes located in Manciano, Italy.