By: Sophie Li

Don’t worry, these asteroids have a zero percent chance of actually hitting Earth.

On Thursday and Saturday, stargazers will have a chance to see the 2011 UL21 and 2024 MK asteroids passing Earth.

The 7600-foot 2011 UL21 will be visible on Thursday at 4:41 p.m. EST. If it hit Earth, the asteroid would threaten the existence of humanity. Luckily, it is predicted to pass around 4 million miles from Earth, a distance over 17 times farther than the Moon. It will only be visible with a strong telescope.

The 2024 MK will be much easier to view. At 400-850 feet long, it passes Earth at seventy-five percent of the distance to the Moon, at 180,000 miles. This is the third time an asteroid of this size has passed Earth in the past century. On Saturday at 9:46 a.m. EST, viewers in the Southwestern United States, Hawaii, and South America may glimpse the asteroid with a backyard telescope or good binoculars, ideally under a cloud-free sky.

“The object will be moving fast, so you have to have some skills to spot it,” said Juan Luis Cano, a member of the Planetary Defense Office at the European Space Agency to the New York Times.

Even if you don’t get a glimpse of an asteroid this summer, on April 13, 2029, an 1100-foot-long asteroid named Apophis will fly 20,000 miles past the Earth’s surface. This time, it will be visible to the naked eye.

These close encounters are crucial for planetary defense researchers to study the behavior of asteroids and protect Earth. For example, 2024 MK was not detected until 13 days before its predicted passing date. Knowing the location of the asteroid is a crucial first step when identifying and dealing with threats.

“The case of 2024 MK is yet another reminder about the fact that there are a lot of large objects still to be found,” Cano tells the New York Times.

For stargazers, the next few days will be an opportunity to witness a rare event, but for researchers, they provide valuable data in their effort to defend Earth.