Christmas 'Hippo' Asteroid Is Buzzing Earth, Its Closest Flyby in 400 Years

By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | December 22, 2018 09:36am ET

If only a hippopotamus will do this Christmas, Santa has the space rock for you.

A small asteroid will fly safely by Earth Saturday (Dec. 22) and according to the folks at NASA, it looks just like the mighty hippo in new radar images. The asteroid, called 2003 SD220, is also making its closest approach to Earth in more than 400 years and won't be any closer until 2070, NASA officials said. It last flew by Earth on Christmas Eve of 2015.

"Do you want a hippopotamus for Christmas?" officials with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote on Twitter Friday (Dec. 21). "You're in luck. Hippo-shaped #asteroid 2003 SD220 will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of ~1.8 million miles (~2.9 million km)." (If you're wondering about the Christmas-hippotomas connection, watch this adorable music video of "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" as sung by a 10-year-old Gayla Peevey in 1953.)

The new radar images revealed that asteroid 2003 SD220 is nearly 1 mile long (1.6 kilometers) and has a shape "similar to that of the exposed portion of a hippopotamus wading in a river," JPL officials said in a statement. The asteroid's size and close flybys of Earth make it potentially hazardous asteroid to watch for NASA, but it poses no impact threat to our planet, agency officials said. [Potentially Dangerous Asteroids in Pictures]

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