Asteroid
The chunk of space rock, about 50 metres wide, will give us such a near miss that it will skim our planet inside the geosynchronous orbits of many TV and communications satellites on 15 February.
And despite its small size, it will become visible to amateur astronomers in binoculars and small telescopes, with its rapid motion across the starry background, covering an area of sky greater than the apparent width of the Moon every minute, being quite obvious.
The asteroid, which was discovered last year, is labelled 2012 DA14 and is known as a Near-Earth Object because its orbit makes it a potential impact threat at some time in its history. Fortunately, it will not hit us this time or at any date in the predictable future.
Although the asteroid is small, if it were on a collision course with Earth, it would produce the equivalent of 2.5 megatons of TNT.
In December, a larger 5 km-wide asteroid called Toutatis sped by us at a distance of 7 million km and was imaged by Chaina's Chang'e 2 space probe and by radar by radio telescopes on Earth.
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