Massive 2,400ft-wide ‘Halloween asteroid’ expected to zoom past Earth next week

A gigantic asteroid is set to make a ‘close pass’ by our planet just in time for Halloween.

That’s something to really look forward to this spooky season, isn’t it?

Don’t worry about it – if recent scientific advances are to be believed we have nothing at all to fear from this asteroid, because we’ll just fire a huge rocket at it and change the course.

It’s an incredible feat of engineering and an excellent advancement of humankind that we can now deflect space rocks hurtling towards us at massive speed.

Here's how that works, in case you're interested:

Anyway, we needn’t worry too much about this one, because the Halloween asteroid – as some have nicknamed it – won’t be bothering us down here.

That’s because while it is scheduled to make what NASA would call a ‘close pass’ it won’t truly ever be that close to us.

Space is absolutely massive, remember?

Things that are utterly incomprehensibly huge seem tiny out there, and in this instance a 2,400-foot rock speeding through the firmament at 52,000 miles per hour is fairly small.

That ‘close’ that they’re talking about is still more than two million kilometres away, too.

For context, that’s about six times the distance between the earth and the moon.

While it has been classed as ‘potentially hazardous’ it is still going to be a decent distance from us.

Zoonar GmbH/Alamy

The asteroid itself is about the size of the Burj Khalifa, the biggest building in the world, and nearly twice the size of the Empire State Building.

Again – don’t worry – it’s almost definitely not going to hit us.

Amateur astronomer Tony Dunn told The Sun: "No danger, but newly-discovered asteroid 2022 RM4 will pass less than 6 lunar distances on November 1.

"Possibly as wide as 740 meters, it will brighten to mag 14.3, well within reach of backyard telescopes.

"This is very close for an asteroid this size."

As we’ve mentioned before, in the event that an asteroid does actually pose a threat to the planet, NASA has now devised a way of deflecting them.

Science Photo Library/Alamy

The DART mission – that’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test to you and me – did successfully deflect the path of an asteroid in a recent test, which NASA administrator Bill Nelson called a ‘giant step in planetary defence’.

Hopefully they start taking all their ideas from Bruce Willis movies in future, after this one has been such a great success.

We’ll have to wait and see on that front.