Nasa spokesman Don Yeomans said: 'On November 8, asteroid YU55 will
fly past Earth and at its closest approach point will be about
325,000kms away.
This asteroid is about 400 metres wide - the largest space rock we have identified that will come this close until 2028.'
Despite YU55's close proximity to Earth, its gravitational pull on our planet will be 'immeasurably miniscule'.
Mr
Yeomans added: 'During its closest approach, its gravitational effect
on the Earth will be so miniscule as to be immeasurable. It will not
affect the tides or anything else.'
It is, however, still
officially labelled a 'potentially hazardous object' - if it was to hit
Earth, it would exert a force the equivalent of 65,000 atomic bombs and
leave a crater six miles wide and 2,000ft deep.
YU55 was
discovered by Robert McMillan, head of the Nasa-funded Spacewatch
Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson in December 2005.
It orbits the sun once every 14 years but will not collide with Earth for at least a century.
'YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over, at the very least, the next 100 years,' Mr Yeomans said.
Scientists
around the world have long been discussing ways of deflecting
potentially hazardous asteroids to prevent them hitting Earth.
One of the more popular methods is to detonate a nuclear warhead on an approaching asteroid to deflect it from its orbital path.
Last
year, physicist David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in the US argued that nuclear weapons could be the best
strategy for avoiding an asteroid impact - especially for large
asteroids and with little warning time.
/Daily Mail/
