A large asteroid could hit earth in 2046 and on Valentine's Day, nonetheless.

According to NASA, the asteroid, called 2023 DW, could possibly make contact with the earth on February 14, 2046.

Photo: Pixabay/Arek Socha

It's currently believed to be over 11 million miles from Earth, but NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Sentry system shows that earth could be in its path. In fact, the system gave the asteroid a 1 in 560 chance of hitting Earth.

Speaking with CNN, navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia said that though there's a possibility the asteroid could hit earth, scientists aren't particularly concerned about it. However, they're still monitoring the asteroid and gathering as much information about it as possible.

Photo: Flickr/Nick Bramhall License: CC BY-SA 2.0

The NASA Asteroid Watch tweeted about the asteroid, saying: "We've been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future."

https://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch/status/1633234541526523904?s=20

They added, "Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in."

You can monitor 2023 DW and other asteroids on NASA's website here.

https://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch/status/1633234621721722881

While it's possible that further analysis could reveal the asteroid is more of a threat to earth than originally thought, NASA will be ready if that's the case. Back in September 2022, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) proved a success in knocking a giant asteroid out of earth's path.