‘Killer’ Asteroid 2004 MN4 is scheduled to rendevous with Earth on Friday 13, 2029. The encounter will be so close that for a long time, folks have been saying it will hit. Recent calculations report that it should miss, but as this NASA release shows…

…depicted nicely in one of the little diagrams attached to the story, it will come closer than any other asteroid in recorded history.The diagram I refer to is the one with a black background showing the Earth and the Moon and the calculated path of the asteroid. The asteroid will supposedly it’s trajectory changed by 28 degrees by the pull of Earth’s gravity during the encounter, which *might* mean a collision with Earth on it’s next pass through, though scientists are reluctant to say anything on that topic until it gets close enough for further study.

The asteroid will appear brighter in the sky than any asteroid in recorded history (at magnitude 3), passing closer to the earth (30,000km) than our geo-synchronous satellites in orbit (36,000km). The report seems to suggest that it will only be visible in the sky to those in Europe, Africa and Asia, though I haven’t read too much deeper on the subject to confirm that.

Read the NASA release here