World News – AU – Asteroid flying past Earth at Christmas is bigger than the Statue of Liberty

How did you like a replica of the Statue of Liberty for Christmas? Or better yet, how about an asteroid twice the size of Lady Liberty for Xmas? Then you are only 2 million miles away from what you want.

The asteroid – SD224 – is racing towards earth and flies by on Christmas Day. It’ll only be a few thousand miles faster than a space capsule – 22. 000 miles per hour. For speed fans, that’s 30 times faster than the speed of sound.

Here’s what’s crazy. The asteroid is considered a near-earth object, but when it passes it is eight times further from the earth than the moon.

By the way . . . SD224 is not alone. There are almost 25. 000 near-earth objects in the sky. And it wouldn’t be the first time something has been hit. Check out this huge crater in Arizona.

The odds are certainly in our favor . . . NASA says the real danger of an asteroid destroying the earth occurs only once in a million years. The question . . . Where are we in this spectrum?

Asteroid, Earth, Christmas Day, NASA, National Monument of the Statue of Liberty, Near-Earth Asteroid