It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a “potentially hazardous asteroid.”

On July 18, 2023, an algorithm called HelioLinc3D identified a 600-foot asteroid, which has since been christened “2022 SF289.”

Though it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the discovery is a massive achievement.

Partnering with the University of Hawaii’s NASA-funded ATLAS project, which focuses on early asteroid detection, scientists testing the new algorithm were able to nail down the space rock.

A statement released July 31 by the University of Washington — whose scientists developed HelioLinc3D — explains what we know so far about the asteroid.

With the new algorithm, data fragments from four separate nights of observation were combined, allowing scientists to classify 2022 SF289 as a “potentially hazardous asteroid” (PHA).

PHAs are roughly defined as bodies in space whose trajectory takes them within 5 million miles of Earth’s orbit — which is about 20 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

Newly-identified 2022 SF289 is apparently unthreatening for the foreseeable future, though its trajectory will take it within 140,000 miles of the Earth’s orbit. That, along with the rock’s 600-foot diameter, establishes the newly-minted asteroid as a PHA that scientists would “like to keep an eye on.”

The development of HelioLinc3D means even bigger things for the future.

In fact, the algorithm was created by scientists like the University of Washington’s Aren Heinze in order to prepare for the upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky to take place at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The observatory will not be fully operational until 2025, so the identification of asteroid 2022 SF289 represents a success for the algorithm’s test drive.

As Heinze said: “By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to look for thousands of yet-unknown potentially hazardous asteroids, the discovery of 2022 SF289 makes us all safer.”

Scientists currently know of 2,350 PHAs, but the new algorithm will allow for the detection of far more. By some estimates, there are as many as 3,000 left to discover.