Asteroid 1997 NC1 flies harmlessly past Earth

A near‑Earth asteroid designated 1997 NC1, measuring between 750 m and 1.65 km in diameter – roughly the size of two to four Empire State Buildings – made its closest approach on Saturday morning, passing within about 2.6 million km (1.6 million mi) of the planet. The European Space Agency and NASA confirmed that the object poses no impact risk now or during this pass, and the next similarly close approach is not expected until 2133.

The asteroid was discovered in 1997 by a monitoring system in Hawaii and is continuously tracked by international space agencies. It was not visible to the naked eye, but observers with small telescopes or binoculars in dark‑sky locations could see it as a faint moving point, and several amateur sky‑watchers in Mexico captured video of its trajectory.