New York, January 4:  NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office that detects, tracks, and characterizes Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) to enable mitigation of potential future NEO impacts, stated that an asteroid almost double the size of the Empire State Building is heading towards the Earth. The massive asteroid is set to zoom past Earth at 43,000 miles per hour around January 18, said reports. Nostradamus Predictions For 2022: From Asteroid to Political Assassination and Artificial Intelligence to Civil War, These Are the Prophecies by Legendary Astrologer.

However, this is not the only asteroid expected to zoom past from near Earth this year. Earlier, NASA had provided information on the five asteroids that are expected to have a close brush with planet Earth. Their names below:

Asteroid 1: Name - (2021 YK), Approximate Size - 36 Feet (Bus-Size), Closest Earth Approach - 118,000 miles. Date- 2 January, 2022

Asteroid 2: Name - (2021 YQ), Approximate Size - 200 Feet (Airplane Size), Closest Earth Approach - 1,330,000 miles. Date- January 5, 2022

Asteroid 3: Name - (2014 YE15), Approximate Size - 24 Feet (Bus-Size), Closest Earth Approach - 4,600,000 miles. Date- January 6, 2022

Asteroid 4: Name - (2020 AP1), Approximate Size - 13 Feet (Car-Size), Closest Earth Approach - 1,080,000 miles. Date - January 7, 2022

Asteroid 5: Name - (2013 YD48), Approximate Size - 340 Feet (Building-Size), Closest Earth Approach - 3,480,000 miles. Date - January 11, 2022.

NASA late last year launched "DART"- the first test mission to defend planet Earth against objects in the space. "NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California," the space agency had said in its press release on November 24, 2021.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 04, 2022 04:21 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).