Passing asteroid won’t wreck Super Bowl

An asteroid spanning one-third of a mile will hurtle past Earth at about 76,000 mph on Super Bowl Sunday.

Although NASA calls the rocky mass known as 2002 AJ129 a “potentially hazardous asteroid,” fear not: It’s not going to crash into Earth.

“We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately,” said a statement from Paul Chodas, manager of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

“Our calculations indicate that asteroid 2002 AJ129 has no chance — zero — of colliding with Earth on Feb. 4 or any time over the next 100 years.”

What makes the asteroid “potentially hazardous”?

NASA uses preset criteria to define such bodies.

Any that come within 4,650,000 miles of Earth and measure more than 500 feet in diameter are categorized as potentially hazardous asteroids.

In fact, after providing the stats above, NASA revealed that next month’s asteroid won’t come closer than 2.6 million miles from our planet. That’s roughly 10 times the distance between the Earth and moon.

(An asteroid came about 26,000 miles from hitting Earth last fall, by comparison.)

The asteroid will come closest to Earth at around 4:30 p.m. ET on Feb. 4 — too soon for it to see New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady crush the Philadelphia Eagles’ souls.

NASA’s Asteroid Watch account on Twitter went dark during Washington’s shutdown over the weekend, but not before assuaging the fears of presumably terrified tweeters.