A massive asteroid will pass through Earth after Valentine's Day

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Difference between meteorite, meteor, asteroid and comet 1:13

(CNN) - Not long after Valentine's Day ends, a massive asteroid estimated between 439 to 989 meters long will pass Earth around 6:05 am ET on Saturday. Depending on the size range, it could be between the size of a suspension bridge and taller than a skyscraper.

But experts from NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies say we are not in danger.

The asteroid will pass within 5,777,544 km of Earth. That is 15 times the distance from Earth to the Moon, according to NASA.

The asteroid, known as 2002 PZ39, has been tracked since its discovery in August 2002 and its orbit and trajectory are well known. Observations of this particular step began at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on February 11 and will continue until February 17.

The Minor Planet Center has classified the 2002 PZ39 as a "Potentially Dangerous Asteroid," according to NASA. That is true for any object of more than 149 meters that approaches Earth within 7,402,982 million kilometers. But according to the asteroid's trajectory, it should not get closer than expected.

A few more asteroids, within the range of a house the size of an airplane, will also pass through Earth on Sunday and Monday, and the nearest will reach 2,250,000 km from Earth on Monday.

Coincidentally, Saturday marks the seventh anniversary since an asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013. It exploded in the air, releasing 20 to 30 times more energy than that of the first atomic bombs and generating a greater brightness than that of the Sun. It damaged more than 7,000 buildings and injured more than 1,000 people. The shock wave broke the windows 93 km away.

In addition to tracking near-Earth objects that could pose a threat, NASA and other agencies currently have ongoing missions to study near-Earth asteroids and potentially mitigate the danger of a collision.

Knowing the size and orbit of an asteroid is the main battle, as this allows the prediction of near-Earth objects.

In a few years, the Great Synoptic Study Telescope (LSST) will go online and allow the discovery of tens of thousands of asteroids in orbits that could bring them closer to Earth, said Ed Lu, executive director of the Institute of Asteroids and exastronaut of NASA.

"It's an exciting time for planetary defense because we are on the verge of an absolute flood of new observations that will allow us to track 10 times more asteroids than we have traced before," said Lu. “In about two years, the LSST will turn on and its discovery rate will be higher than the rest of the combined telescopes. In the first year, you'll find tens of thousands of asteroids and can track them. ”

Missions such as OSIRIS-REx from NASA and Hayabusa2 from Japan are exploring asteroids in our solar system and aim to return samples to Earth in the coming years. The camera of near-Earth objects, called NEOCam, is characterizing near-Earth objects.

Other missions are also planned. NASA's DART, which means Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is a planetary defense test to prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth. DART, which has a launch window that will open in July 2021, will visit a binary asteroid system where two asteroids orbit each other and seek to deflect a small asteroid.

DART will crash into a moon near the Earth's asteroid Didymos, which is comparable in size to an asteroid that could pose a threat.

The Hera complementary mission of the European Space Agency will accurately measure how the speed of the largest asteroid changed and will study the DART impact crater on the moon.

Asteroid