🚀 Space Watch: Skyscraper-Sized Asteroid 2025 FA22 Misses Earth

NASA announced that a skyscraper-sized asteroid would be passing "relatively close" to Earth on Tuesday.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have confirmed that asteroid 2025 FA22 poses no immediate threat to Earth. After fresh measurements, scientists officially removed it from the risk table—easing fears of a possible impact.

While there’s no danger this time, ESA researchers remind us:

“Impacts on this scale are rare, but the consequences would be catastrophic.”

That’s why Thursday morning’s close pass gave astronomers a rare opportunity to study this skyscraper-sized space rock up close.

🔭 How It Was Discovered

Astronomers first detected 2025 FA22 back in March using a special telescope in Hawaii. It quickly made ESA’s watch list of potentially dangerous asteroids, joining thousands of others that orbit close to Earth.

🌍 What If It Hit Earth?

Although 2025 FA22 is now confirmed safe, scientists say that if something of its size and speed ever struck Earth, the results would be devastating. Imagine:

• A major city crushed on impact

• Widespread fires igniting

• Tsunamis rippling across oceans

Luckily, that nightmare scenario isn’t happening today.

👀 Can You See It?

For most of us, 2025 FA22 is invisible to the naked eye. But astronomers with strong telescopes or binoculars could spot it as a faint moving dot against the stars around 3:40 a.m. ET on Sept. 18.

🌌 Asteroids at a Glance

• Asteroids are rocky remnants from billions of years ago, leftovers from the formation of the solar system.

• Sizes range from small boulders to mountain-sized giants.

• NASA estimates there are 1.3 million+ asteroids in our solar system.

• More than 30,000 are classified as near-Earth objects (NEOs).

• Any asteroid larger than 492 feet passing within 4.6 million miles of Earth is labeled “potentially hazardous.”

NASA’s Asteroid Watch keeps a constant eye on these space travelers, ensuring we’re not caught off guard.

🌠 For perspective: asteroid Bennu, another space rock under close watch, could collide with Earth in the late 2100s. That’s why ongoing monitoring and research are critical.

The universe is vast, unpredictable, and a little dangerous—but for now, Earth is safe from 2025 FA22.