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Space rock will pass beneath satellites and will be the nearest miss ever known.
A 45-metre lump of space rock with the destructive power of an H-bomb will narrowly miss Earth a week on Friday, the Sunday People has reported.
The mini asteroid will fly BENEATH satellites on February 15, missing us by 15,000 miles, the nearest ever known.
Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near Earth Object Programme said: “It will be a record-setting close approach though the orbit of the asteroid is known well enough to rule out an impact.”
But the asteroid will keep coming back every year and astronomers cannot rule out an impact on one of its visits.
The lump, the size of a block of flats, would flatten London if it hit the capital.
“The most important thing about this asteroid is it reminds us the threat from such objects is very real,” said Jonti Horner, astronomer at Australia’s University of New South Wales.
The asteroid – named 2012 DA14 after it was discovered last year – is one of 500,000 known rocks circling us. Experts predict there are many more.
International governments are currently in talks on how to deflect one if it was on a collision course with us.
One proposal would be knock it off course by flying rockets at it.
The European Space Agency plans to practise this on 800-metre asteroid Didymos in 2020.
Other proposals include nuking asteroids with missiles.
It was an asteroid six miles across which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Anything larger than 1,000 metres wide would cause a global catastrophe.