Asteroid twice the size of Statue of Liberty shoots past Earth in ‘close approach’

A LARGE asteroid has shot previous Earth and reached its closest level on January 24.

Nasa has its eye on the massive area rock because it's thought-about a 'close to Earth object'.

The asteroid shot previous us from a secure distanceCredit score: Getty

It is referred to as Asteroid 2017 XC62 and Nasa thinks it is as much as 623 toes extensive.

That is over twice the scale of the Statue of Liberty.

The enormous asteroid shot previous Earth at 9,500 miles per hour on Monday.

The excellent news is it stayed a distance of 4.4 million miles away.

As compared, the Moon is barely about 238,900 miles from us.

The asteroid could seem fairly prefer it stayed fairly far-off but it surely's truly fairly shut when it comes to area.

Nasa considers something passing close to Earth's orbit a Close to-Earth Object (NEO).

1000's of NEOs are tracked by scientists to watch whether or not they're on a collision course with our planet.

Any fast-moving area object that comes inside 4.65 million miles is taken into account to be "probably hazardous" by cautious area organizations.

One small change to their trajectories may spell catastrophe for Earth.

Plans to avoid wasting Earth from asteroids

Some consultants are frightened that Earth is not but able to defend itself from probably lethal asteroids.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as soon as sparked concern by tweeting: "an enormous rock will hit Earth finally & we at the moment haven't any defence."

Nasa is wanting into to some defence strategies although.

It not too long ago launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Take a look at mission.

Nasa mentioned: "DART is the first-ever mission devoted to investigating and demonstrating one methodology of asteroid deflection by altering an asteroid’s movement in area by way of kinetic influence."

The DART craft ought to slam right into a small asteroid referred to as Dimorphos in September with the purpose of transferring it off target.

In different information, Nasa has revealed beautiful footage of a photo voltaic flare in motion.

China has constructed an 'synthetic moon' to coach its astronauts for future missions.

An enormous asteroid was captured in eerie footage because it shot previous Earth this week.