ASTEROID ALERT: NF23 – bigger than St Paul’s Cathedral – whizzes this close past Earth

Asteroid 2016 NF23 is currently zooming past Earth at 20,000 miles per hour, or or more than 300 miles per minute – some fifteen times faster than the Concorde.

Space boffins at NASA say that the mega rock is is up to 160 metres wide – much bigger than London’s St Paul’s Cathedral which stands at 111 metres.

Asteroid 2016 will zoom past Earth at a distance of around three million miles – close enough for it to be described as a “near-Earth object” (NEO).

Anything that comes closer than 4,650,000 miles of Earth is classified by NASA as a NEO.

NASA planetary defence officer Lindley Johnson said: “There is absolutely nothing for concern by this pass of 2016 NF23.

“This object is merely designated a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) because its orbit over time brings it within eight million kilometres of Earth’s orbit, but there is nothing hazardous to Earth or even unique about this pass of the asteroid.”

Also expected within the next week is the 1998 SD9 asteroid, which will fly past around four times further away than the moon.

The 1998 SD9 is between 38m and 86m wide and is estimated to travel at a speed of 10.7km per second.

NASA has been watching the rock since it was first discovered in 1998 — is the suggestively-named ‘1998 SD9’.

The 1998 SD9 is expected to make a much closer pass at us from 4 lunar distances away, but no specific date has been calculated by Nasa who can only say it will pass within the next week.

According to Purdue University’s Impact Earth tool it would make a crater a kilometre across and 300m deep.