A skyscraper-sized asteroid just buzzed past Earth — and yep, we’re somehow still here to talk about it.
In what sounds like the setup for a summer disaster movie (cue dramatic music, insert panicked scientist), a giant space rock the size of a New York skyscraper quietly cruised past our planet in the early hours of September 18. Scientists say it clocked in at over 24,000 miles per hour, which, for context, is fast enough to circle Earth in just over an hour and still have time for a coffee break.
Its name? 2025 FA22. Sounds more like a Star Wars droid than a threat to humanity, but don’t let the harmless name fool you — this thing is big. Somewhere between 427 and 951 feet wide, depending on which expert you ask. That’s roughly the size of a 70-story building. Or to put it another way: if it had hit Earth, we wouldn’t be here to joke about it.
A skyscraper-sized asteroid will be livestreamed as it skims past Earth on 18 September
FA22 will be 520,000 miles away, about twice the distance to the Moon pic.twitter.com/QbFJZe4k23
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) September 17, 2025
Now, here’s the twist: no one’s panicking. At least, not anymore.
According to NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), 2025 FA22 has officially been taken off the risk table after updated measurements confirmed it won’t crash into us. Not today, not tomorrow, and not even in 2089 or 2173, when it’s scheduled to swing by again — probably without a heads-up, just like this time.
Still, the space agencies did throw in one of those casually terrifying science statements just for fun. Something like:
“Impacts on this scale are rare, but the consequences would be catastrophic.”
Translation: It’s fine. Totally fine. Unless it’s not. (Sleep tight!)
The asteroid was first spotted back in March, thanks to a telescope in Hawaii — one of those cool, high-tech ones that can see things millions of miles away while you can’t even find your phone charger. Once discovered, 2025 FA22 was added to a watch list of “maybe” threats. You know, just in case it decided to take a detour and drop in uninvited.
Thankfully, that didn’t happen. But if it had?
Let’s just say we’d be looking at a very bad day. Experts say a rock that big could flatten a city, light up the sky, start fires, cause tsunamis, and probably break the internet — which is when people would really start freaking out.
You can’t see it with the naked eye (no, it’s not hiding behind your neighbor’s garage), but astronomers say with the right telescope or a really good pair of binoculars, you could’ve spotted it as a faint speck around 3:40 a.m. Eastern Time.
Missed it? No worries — you’ll get another chance in, oh, 64 years.
Just don’t forget: space is basically full of these things. NASA estimates there are over 1.3 million asteroids out there, with 30,000+ near-Earth objects zipping around at any given time.
Anything bigger than 492 feet that comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth gets a little red flag — the “potentially hazardous” label. And while most of them pass by with a polite wave, it’s a little unsettling to realize we’re basically just dodging cosmic bullets on a regular basis.
