An asteroid the size of a skyscraper will fly past Earth on Friday at a distance of 1.7 million miles.
Don't worry: there's no chance he'll hit us. The celestial sphere is seven times as far away from Earth as the Moon.
NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimates the diameter of the space rock to be between 210 and 480 meters. The asteroid could be as long as the Empire State Building in New York City or the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt am Main.
The asteroid, discovered in 2008, is named 2008 OS7. It won't come our way again until 2032, but at a much greater distance of 45 million miles (72 million kilometers).
On January 21st, an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere over Germany and burned up near Berlin. A few days later, a Polish search team found pieces of meteorites near Nauen in Havelland. Small chunks of the mini asteroid that fell over Brandenburg are to be examined in the laboratory.
The harmless flyby of 2008 OS7 is one of several encounters this week. Three much smaller asteroids will also fly harmlessly past Earth on Friday, measuring no more than 10 meters in diameter, and two more on Saturday. On Sunday, an asteroid about half the size of 2008 0S7 will fly past Earth at a distance of 7.3 million kilometers.
lpz/AP