【Female Hostel 3】

An asteroid passed 26,Female Hostel 3000 miles from Earth early Thursday morning, but NASA scientists weren't alarmed: They had been waiting for this space rock, named 2012 TC4, to cruise by for around five years.

The asteroid is estimated to be about 45 to 100 feet in diameter, so it never had the potential to catastrophically harm the Earth.

However, it still got pretty close in cosmic terms. A distance of 26,000 miles is about one-tenth the distance between Earth and the moon. There are also hundreds of satellites orbiting Earth at about this distance.

SEE ALSO: Everything You Thought You Knew About Asteroids Is Wrong

Confident that the asteroid would harmlessly pass by and continue its aimless travels through our solar system, scientists instead used 2012 TC4 to test the world's developing asteroid detection system as a means of preparing for what could be a real threat years from now.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"Asteroid trackers are using this flyby to test the worldwide asteroid detection and tracking network, assessing our capability to work together in response to finding a potential real asteroid-impact threat," said NASA planetary scientist Michael Kelley in a statement.

Globally, thousands of telescopes peered at 2012 TC4 as it approached Earth. At its closest distance, the asteroid traveled over Antarctica. Following the event, scientists can see how close their size estimates of the asteroid were, and hopefully understand how they can improve their detection of near-Earth planetary threats.

Fortunately, NASA believes that it has identified 90 percent of either comets or asteroids that are over a kilometer in size (just over a mile) and close enough to be of concern to those of us on this planet.

As of now, NASA does not expect any currently known asteroid, large or small, to hit Earth in the next 100 years. But like asteroid 2012 TC4, some will pass alarmingly close to our humble blue sphere.

---

Featured Video For You

---

The tallest skyscraper could be hanging from an asteroid

---

• Science
• Entertainment
• Shopping
• Social Good
• Deals
• Tech
• Games
• Digital Culture

• Finger-Lickin’ Lulz
• Staff Picks: Chad Harbach, The Mets, Masters of the Sob by The Paris Review
• Big Sky by Danny Singer
• Chess and Madness by Yascha Mounk
• A Liberal Comity Show
• Well Preserved by Ian Volner
• Alexis Ohanian resigns from Reddit to make room for black board member
• Trudeau takes 20
• Gun Anarchy and the Unfree State
• La Reine is Splitting for Iowa, Vive La Reine by Lorin Stein

• What's coming to Netflix in November 2017
• Google Pixel 2 XL users report display color and burn
• Facebook's News Feed tests could free up ad space it desperately needs
• Chicago bar opens up a Moe's Tavern pop
• Hundreds of thousands of unsold Snap Spectacles are wasting away in a warehouse
• Robert Guillaume, voice of Rafiki in 'The Lion King', dies aged 89
• You have to see the motion
• Nintendo announces 'Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp' for mobile
• Elizabeth Warren, Claire McCaskill share their #MeToo experiences
• Google to integrate enterprise tools natively into Gmail

• A Right to Police Accountability
• Elon Musk is 'personally' paying for some celebs' Twitter Blue ticks
• Win Two Tickets to Arcadia by Peter Conroy
• Maira Kalman by Daisy Atterbury
• <i>New People</i>, Old Words
• Bluesky, Jack Dorsey's decentralized Twitter killer, is now on Android
• 'Doctor Who' gives us our first look at Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor
• A (Secret) History of Pseudonyms by Thessaly La Force
• At the Columbia University Strike
• A Week in Culture: Barry Yourgrau, Writer by Barry Yourgrau

• The Queer Art of Failing Better
• Anthony Caro by Ariel Ramchandani
• On the Shelf by Sadie Stein
• Calls to delete popular astrology app Co—Star after controversial protest meme
• Boys to Men
• Oliver Broudy on ‘The Saint’ by Rosalind Parry
• Anthony Caro by Ariel Ramchandani
• Making Art by Thessaly La Force
• Kitchen-Sink Drama
• How tech leaders can do more for racial justice than just tweet