Eiffel Tower-sized asteroid to pass Earth today, would leave 3-mile crater if it hit

A massive asteroid bigger than the Eiffel Tower is set to whizz by Earth on Friday, NASA has warned. The potentially hazardous space rock is so large it would leave a three mile crater and mass destruction if it hit our planet.

2019 GT3 is almost as big as a skyscraper, with a diameter of 1,247 feet and will hurtle past Earth at 30,500 miles per hour. If it were to head straight for our planet, it would be too large to break up in the atmosphere and would crash to the ground, likely causing massive damage. 

The asteroid is due to come within 0.04996 astronomical units or around 4.6 million miles of Earth, placing it squarely in the potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) category used by astronomers to describe some near-Earth objects that could make “threatening close approaches,” NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) explains. 

Our close encounter with 2019 GT3 comes just weeks after another close call with a “city-killer” asteroid, 2019 OK, which scientists only detected mere hours before it sped by Earth.  

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