No, an asteroid is not going to destroy Earth on Super Bowl Sunday

You may have heard about a Daily Mail piece that helpfully informed everyone that a giant asteroid will be hurtling through Earth’s little corner of the universe on Sunday. Go ahead and RSVP to that Super Bowl party and buy whatever you need to make that buffalo-chicken dip, because that asteroid isn’t going to hit anything.

NASA has been tracking this particular asteroid, known as Asteroid 2000 AJ129, for years. But it landed on everyone’s radar (pun intended) in January when the Daily Mail made it sound like this thing might actually collide with Earth. It won’t.

Here’s everything you need to know about this massive chunk of space gravel that’s not going to actually impact your life in any way on Sunday.

What is an asteroid? It’s a piece of rock that orbits the sun. The earth’s atmosphere gets hit with an asteroid about the size of a car once a year or so, but it typically burns itself up before hitting the ground, according to NASA.

How big is THIS asteroid? It’s estimated to be between .3 and .75 miles wide. And it’s flying toward earth at 67,000 mph. So yeah, if it did hit, it would be catastrophic. But it won’t.

NASA projects that any asteroid larger than a half a mile across could have a worldwide impact.

A worldwide impact, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs? That asteroid was projected to be as large as 7.5 miles wide and caused mass extinction 66 million years ago. This one would be bad, but not that bad.

If an asteroid the size of AJ129 did hit the earth, it would cause death and destruction around the impact site and would also throw debris and dust into the atmosphere. It might take as long as a decade for that to settle, and the result would be global cooling and darkness.

Why did NASA label it “potentially hazardous” then? It labels any asteroid that’s larger than a half mile wide and passing within 4.65 million miles of Earth as “potentially hazardous.” But the closest this one will come to us will still be 10 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Are you absolutely sure it won’t hit us? Yes. Please allow NASA manager Paul Chodas to explain.

“We have been tracking this asteroid for over 14 years and know its orbit very accurately,” Chodas said. “Asteroid 2002 AJ129 has no chance — zero — of colliding with Earth on Feb. 4 or any time over the next 100 years.”

There is a better chance of the Browns winning Super Bowl LII, a game they are most certainly not playing in, than of this asteroid hitting the earth.

What if I’d rather watch the asteroid than the Super Bowl? Then you’re in luck, because you can. Get your telescope out and visit The Sky Live to find out precisely where the asteroid is. You can also get a sense of its trajectory with this handy video NASA put together.