 This Halloween, Earth is getting a spooky visitor from the depths of outer space. NASA announced last week that a 1,300-foot wide asteroid will zoom close by our planet on October 31st. The asteroid is named 2015 TV145, so let's just go ahead and call it the Pumpkin Asteroid. It's slated to come within 1.3 lunar distances of us. That's only 300,000 miles away. That may seem like a haunting encounter, but the truth is, there's nothing to fear. The asteroid will simply shriek by us at a whopping 22 miles per second. The object is something of a mad scientist, too. It has what is known as an eccentric orbit, meaning it follows an elliptical path rather than a circular one. The Pumpkin Asteroid was first discovered by telescopes in Hawaii on October 10th, so we really haven't known about it for a very long time. The reason for the short warning time is because this object isn't that big in NASA's eyes. The space agency is primarily concerned with finding 1-kilometer asteroids, or for you non-metric users out there, those that are over 3,200 feet wide. Asteroids of that size or bigger would definitely wipe us out if they hit our planet. NASA says it knows about a little more than 90% of those asteroids, and thankfully, none is slated to hit us anytime soon. So to repeat, the Pumpkin Asteroid will not hit us. But since it's Halloween, let's have a little morbid fun, shall we? What would happen if it did hit our way? It would still do some scary damage. It's not small enough to harmlessly burn up in our atmosphere, but it's not big enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. An object of this size could take out an entire continent, and if it was a little bit bigger, at 2,000 feet, it'd be just below the threshold of a global catastrophe. But to aggressively repeat, there's no need to plan for the apocalypse this Halloween. Instead, the Pumpkin Asteroid will provide a great opportunity to test out new radar technology. During the flyby, scientists will bounce radio waves off the object in order to get a radar image of its surface. Meanwhile, I'll be cheering them on while I drown myself in Milky Ways. See what I did there.
 This Halloween, Earth is getting a spooky visitor from the depths of outer space.
 NASA announced last week that a 1,300-foot wide asteroid will zoom close by our planet
 on October 31st.
 The asteroid is named 2015 TV145, so let's just go ahead and call it the Pumpkin Asteroid.
 It's slated to come within 1.3 lunar distances of us.
 That's only 300,000 miles away.
 That may seem like a haunting encounter, but the truth is, there's nothing to fear.
 The asteroid will simply shriek by us at a whopping 22 miles per second.
 The object is something of a mad scientist, too.
 It has what is known as an eccentric orbit, meaning it follows an elliptical path rather
 than a circular one.
 The Pumpkin Asteroid was first discovered by telescopes in Hawaii on October 10th, so
 we really haven't known about it for a very long time.
 The reason for the short warning time is because this object isn't that big in NASA's eyes.
 The space agency is primarily concerned with finding 1-kilometer asteroids, or for you
 non-metric users out there, those that are over 3,200 feet wide.
 Asteroids of that size or bigger would definitely wipe us out if they hit our planet.
 NASA says it knows about a little more than 90% of those asteroids, and thankfully, none
 is slated to hit us anytime soon.
 So to repeat, the Pumpkin Asteroid will not hit us.
 But since it's Halloween, let's have a little morbid fun, shall we?
 What would happen if it did hit our way?
 It would still do some scary damage.
 It's not small enough to harmlessly burn up in our atmosphere, but it's not big enough
 to wipe out the dinosaurs.
 An object of this size could take out an entire continent, and if it was a little bit bigger,
 at 2,000 feet, it'd be just below the threshold of a global catastrophe.
 But to aggressively repeat, there's no need to plan for the apocalypse this Halloween.
 Instead, the Pumpkin Asteroid will provide a great opportunity to test out new radar
 technology.
 During the flyby, scientists will bounce radio waves off the object in order to get a radar
 image of its surface.
 Meanwhile, I'll be cheering them on while I drown myself in Milky Ways.
 See what I did there.