Blackpool Tower-sized asteroid running towards Earth’s orbit

An asteroid is racing towards Earth’s orbit at astonishing speed, measuring the size of one of Lancashire’s most famous landmarks.

NASA is keeping an eye on space rock which is nearly as tall as Blackpool Tower.

The rock is on track to enter Earth’s orbit on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 at a blazing speed of 25,050 miles per hour, the equivalent of 11.20 kilometers per second.

Dubbed ‘2020 UL3’, the asteroid is estimated to be between 53 and 130m in size, which is the equivalent of 173 and a whopping 426 feet.

It is nearly as high as Blackpool Tower, which was built on May 14, 1894 and is located on the seafront in Blackpool, England, is approximately 154m.

Without its spire, the tower sits just above 135m, making the asteroid nearly as large as the iconic seaside tourist attraction at its upper limit.

NASA predicts the rock will fly at 12:48 Eastern Standard Time, which is 6.48 British Standard Time.

UL3 has been identified as an Apollo asteroid, which is an asteroid that crosses Earth’s orbit as it passes through space.

It is also classified as a Near Earth Object, which according to NASA is a term used to describe comets and asteroids that have been propelled by the gravitational pull of neighboring planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood.

An object must also be within 1.3 astronomical units to be classified as NEO.

It might seem close, but asteroid UL3 is currently estimated to have passed into space at a distance of 0.039 astronomical units from Earth.

To put it into perspective, this is the equivalent of 3,625,276 land miles.

UL3 is highly unlikely to cause problems for the Earth and life on our planet, but in rare cases it can cause problems for weather systems.

Earth did not see an apocalyptic-sized asteroid from space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.