The Closest Shave Ever With Earth… 40-Metre-Long Asteroid Coming Towards Earth

It’s a 40-metre-long chunk of work hurtling through space and it’s going to pass closer to the Earth than any other near miss on record.

Scientists at the space agency NASA are expecting to reveal the news and reassure us mere Earthlings at a news conference later on today.

Their calculations predict Asteroid 2012 DA14 will whistle past Earth on February 15^th closer than the orbit of some weather and communications satellites, speeding by at a distance of 17,000 miles (27,400km).

It will be the planet's closest ever shave with an identified flying object since records began.

Asteroids and meteorites that have come closer than this one have ended up colliding with the planet but this one is not thought to be a danger to either us or satellites.

A diagram of the asteroid's path.

The flying rock was discovered by a Spanish dentist turned amateur asteroid spotter. Former space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones told Sky News there are thought to be a million asteroids out there as big as 2012 DA14.

They are called “city killers” because they would be able to wipe out a metropolitan area should they hit the planet. NASA is thought to have tabs on only 1% of them.

One struck a remote part of Russia in 1908 and flattened vast areas of forest in what became known as the Tunguska incident.

But we’ve nothing to worry about, we can just watch this one shave past our planet…