The asteroid will overfly Earth at the fall equinox.

On Wednesday (September 22), the fall equinox will bring the Earth about 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of the night, and a renegade space rock measuring about three times the size of the Statue of Liberty.

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, this asteroid, called 2021 NY1, will pass through our planet safely but is still considered a Near-Earth Object (NEO) because it will pass within about 120 million miles (193 million kilometers) of the sun.

By that standard, asteroid 2021 NY1 will make a relatively close approach of about 970,000 miles (1,560,000 km) away from Earth — or just under four times the distance between Earth and the moon.

While asteroids like this pose no threat to life on Earth, NASA monitors all NEOs on the off chance that their orbits might change in the future, bringing them closer to a collision with our planet. The study of NAO characteristics may also reveal new information about the solar system's early days since most asteroids are rock fragments originating from this period.

According to NASA's NEO database, asteroid 2021 NY1 is a decent-sized rock, measuring between 425 and 985 feet in diameter (130 to 300 meters), or somewhere between three and six Statues of Liberty tall. The coasting rock traverses space at approximately 21,000 mph (33,800 km/h), or about 27 times the speed of sound.

This autumnal asteroid is nowhere near the closest ever to pass through our neighborhood. That honor goes to asteroid 2020 HQ, which slid just 1,830 miles (2,950 km) over the Indian Ocean on August 16, 2020.No known asteroid has come near — without burning in the atmosphere or striking the surface of our planet.