Biggest asteroid tracked by NASA passed safely by Earth early Friday morning

Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Early Friday morning, Florence -- the largest near Earth asteroid yet discovered and tracked by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory -- passed within 4,390,892 miles of Earth, approximately 18 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

"While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on September 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller," said NASA scientist Paul Chodas.

The asteroid, named for war nurse Florence Nightingale, measures between 2.5 and 5.6 miles wide --scientists will have a more accurate estimate after the flyby. Anything larger than a half mile in diameter is capable of doing catastrophic damage should it collide with Earth.

Though NASA did not live-stream the event, the space agency has several of its telescopes pointed at the asteroid. The flyby offered astronomers a unique chance to study the surface of an asteroid up close.

"When these small, natural remnants of the formation of the solar system pass relatively close to Earth, deep space radar is a powerful technique for studying their sizes, shapes, rotation, surface features and roughness, and for more precise determination of their orbital path," NASA scientists said.