A huge asteroid three times bigger than a London bus will fly between Earth and the moon tomorrow

A huge asteroid three times larger than a London bus will zip between Earth and the moon tomorrow at a distance of only 159,000 miles, NASA revealed.

Named the 2021 GT3, the 108 ft long space rock will fly to Earth on April 10, achieving the closest approach to the planet at approximately 22:30 BST.

NASA says the asteroid is not a direct threat to life on Earth, because it will be too far to the nearest point to collide with the planet.

The space rock, which will close between 54,000 miles per hour between the Earth and the Moon, will be too weak to be seen with anything other than the largest professional telescopes.

It has an absolute magnification of 26, which will make it invisible to even larger garden telescopes, which usually see up to the 15th magnitude in a clear sky.

It will be 159,000 miles from Earth at its closest approach – for comparison, Earth is about 238,900 miles from the Moon.

The object’s orbit takes it from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, closer to the sun than Mercury and back to the asteroid belt.

During its journey around the sun, the space rock crosses the orbital path of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, making it a potential collision for all, although this orbit the only planet it will be close to is Earth.

The space rock was first detected on April 6 and orbits the sun every 650 days.

GT3 is classified as an object close to the earth (NEO), which poses a potential risk to the Earth, but any object that is 1.3 times the distance from Earth to the Sun is also a NEO.

“Most NEOs are not dangerous. The small percentage of potentially dangerous asteroids attracts additional control, “NASA said in its Asteroid Watch article.

“These objects are defined as those approaching the Earth less than half the Earth-Sun distance,” and GT3 falls into the potentially dangerous group.

The rock is about the same length as three routemaster buses in London or, according to the US space agency, about the size of an average house.

It is the second rock of similar size to make a close approach, GT 2021 following 688,000 miles of Earth at 20:11 BST tonight, passing three times farther from Earth than the moon, according to NASA.

Two more rocks will pass over Earth tomorrow, both larger than GT3, but both passing millions of kilometers from the planet.

GB4, a 236 ft mammoth asteroid will pass three million miles from Earth at about 1:00 BST, followed by GT3 at 22:30, then GT1, a 131 ft long space rock will pass 2.8 million miles of Earth at about 23:16 BST.

It will be a busy weekend for asteroids passing over Earth, although none will come closer to GT3 and most will be millions of miles away, NASA said.

Asteroids are rock fragments left from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, most orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

Occasionally, the orbital paths of asteroids are influenced by the gravitational pull of the planets, which causes their paths to change.

When this happens, it could bring them into a potential orbit of collision with Earth or other planets, including one that killed dinosaurs 65 million years ago.