Watch Asteroid TC4 Approach Earth Live Tonight!

Asteroid TC4 will pass Earth at an estimated distance of 31,000 miles, just an eighth of the distance between our planet and the moon. About 50 feet wide, the asteroid poses absolutely no threat to Earth.

Asteroid 2012 TC4 is no stranger to close encounters. In 2012, the asteroid stunned observers on Earth as it plunged only 94,000 kilometers above our atmosphere (less than a quarter of the distance to the Moon), only a week after its discovery by the PanSTARRS observatory in Hawaii. On October 12th 2017, "2012 TC4" will be back, once again flying by Earth on a super-close trajectory. At the moment of the asteroid’s approach, Slooh will train its telescopes on 2012 TC4 in an attempt to capture the fast-moving space rock as it flies between Earth and the Moon. 

A livestream of the event will begin at 8pm ET. You can watch the broadcast, courtesy of Slooh, above.

Animation depicts the safe flyby of asteroid called 2012 TC4.

Initially, scientists had thought that TC4 could return to Earth in 2050, at which point it was on a collision course with Earth. Updated trajectories now show this is not the case. However, if it were it would have given NASA a chance to try out some of its asteroid deflection techniques.