HEADS UP, EARTH!

Asteroid the size of Empire State Building set to buzz us

Just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse . . .

First, the year brought us a pandemic, protests, riots and murder hornets — and now an asteroid as big as the Empire State Building is hurtling in the direction of Earth.

Fortunately, the giant space rock is expected to whiz past our planet on Saturday in a relatively close call, according to reports.

The asteroid, named 2002 NN4, is estimated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be between 820 and 1,870 feet in diameter, CBS News reported.

By comparison, the Empire State Building is more than 1,400 feet tall.

Traveling at more than 20,000 mph, the asteroid would inflict catastrophic damage on our planet if it hit, physics professor Derek Buzasi of Florida Gulf Coast University told USA Today.

It is larger than about 90 percent of asteroids, said Buzasi, who likened it to a football stadium.

But the asteroid is predicted to stay more than 3 million miles away — or 13 times farther from us than the moon, NASA told the newspaper in an e-mailed statement.

“In short, 2002 NN4 is a very well-known asteroid with a known orbit that will pass Earth at a (very) safe distance,” wrote Ian J. O’Neill of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Information about 2002 NN4 is listed on NASA’s Center for Earth Object Studies Web site, which monitors close approaches to our planet.

While it is unlikely for an asteroid to strike Earth anytime soon, scientists gathered at a conference in 2019 to discuss how to respond to one massive enough to obliterate a major city.

“All we have to do is change its speed a little faster or a little slower so that when it crosses Earth’s orbit, it crosses either in front of us or behind us,” Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, told CBS News.

There are 20,000 asteroids in Earth’s galactic neighborhood and they do occasionally impact, as one meteor did in February 2013 when it streaked into the atmosphere above Russia and exploded over the southeastern city of Chelyabinsk, injuring about 1,600 people.

Still, Glaze told CBS News, the prospect of an asteroid catastrophe “doesn’t really keep me up at night.”

INCOMING: The asteroid 2002 NN4 — which is currently hurtling Earth’s way at 20,000 mph — is estimated to be up to 1,870 feet in diameter, compared with the Empire State Building’s height of 1,400 feet. Luckily, the rock is expected to zoom past us at a distance of 3 million miles.