Bored with the Super Bowl? Here’s something “potentially hazardous” to watch instead

January 25, 2018

While you’re all eating chili, watching the Super Bowl, and rooting for Justin Timberlake on February 4, we’ll be eating chili and staring anxiously at the sky. An asteroid that NASA officials classify as “potentially hazardous” will be zipping past the Earth on Super Bowl Sunday.

The asteroid with the catchy name 2002 AJ129 will flash past the Earth at about 76,000 mph, per NASA. The asteroid is about two-thirds of a mile long and is expected to be closest to the Earth at 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 4, aka when most of the U.S. is four layers deep into a seven-layer dip and distracted by football-shaped meatloaves. “We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately,” Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

While the asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous, it’s not expected to crash into the Earth, although if the Patriots win the Super Bowl again, Eagles fans might wish it did.