Asteroid 2023 RR5 is due to skim past at a distance of 130,000 miles away from Earth, nearly twice as close as the Moon at 240,000 miles.
An asteroid the size of a house is due to soar past Earth today, coming twice as close to our planet as the moon's orbit.
The asteroid will zip past Earth at its closest point at around 1 p.m. UTC, or 9 a.m. EST, according to At only 20 feet across, 2023 RR5 is fairly small. Asteroids can reach much greater sizes, including Ceres and Vesta in the asteroid belt, which measure around 600 miles and 330 miles across, respectively.
"We believe they formed in the asteroid belt and got ejected by impact, or their orbits were destabilized due to the presence of Jupiter resonances in the belt," Franck Marchis, a senior planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute,Stock image of an asteroid passing Earth. 2023 RR5 is estimated to be around 20 feet in diameter, roughly the size of a two-story house.2023 RR5 is forecast to zoom past Earth at 13.
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