Huge asteroid three times the size of a London bus will zip between the earth and the moon TOMORROW

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

Called the 2021 GT3, the 10-meter-long space rock will fly through Earth on April 10 and around 22:30 BC

NASA says the asteroid poses no immediate threat to life on Earth, as it will be too far away at its nearest point to collide with the planet.

The space rock, which will zipper 54,000 miles per hour between the earth and the moon, will be too faint to see with 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 about 15th strength in clear skies.

It will be 159,000 miles from Earth with its closest approximation – in comparison, the Earth is about 238,900 miles from the Moon.

The orbit of the object 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 through the sun, the space rock crosses the orbits of Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury, making it a potential collision for all, although the earth is the only planet she will be close to, the earth.

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

GT3 is classified as a Near Earth Object (NEO), which poses a potential risk to the Earth, but any object that comes within 1.3 times the distance of the Earth to the Sun is also a NEO.

‘Most NEOs do not pose a danger at all. This is the small percentage of potentially dangerous asteroids that attract extra investigation, ‘NASA said in its Asteroid Watch article.

“These objects are defined as those approaching Earth at less than half the Earth’s solar distance,” and GT3 falls within the potentially dangerous grouping.

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

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

Two other rocks will pass by Earth tomorrow, both as large as GT3, but both will travel millions of miles off the planet.

GB4, a huge 236ft asteroid, will pass about 1:00 BC three million miles from Earth, followed by GT3 at 22:30, then GT1, a 131-foot space street, will be about 2.8 million miles from the earth passes by. BST.

It will be a busy weekend for asteroids orbiting the Earth, though no one will get close to GT3 and will be most millions of miles away, NASA said.

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

Sometimes the orbital paths of asteroids are affected by the gravity of planets, which causes their paths to change.

If that happens, it could put them in a potential collision orbit with Earth or other planets, including one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.