NASA believes the space rock, dubbed Asteroid 2019 EN, could be twice as big the Pyramid of Khufu in Giza, Egypt. The space rock is now hurtling towards the Earth on a so-called “Earth Close Approach” trajectory. NASA expects the asteroid to swing by our home planet in the wee morning hours of Wednesday, March 27. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the asteroid will pass Earth around 1.27am GMT (UTC).
The JPL further estimates Asteroid EN measures somewhere in the range of 492ft to 1,115.5ft (150m to 340m) in diameter.
In other words, the asteroid could be as wide as 40 London double-decker buses lined up in a row.
On the other hand, the asteroid might only be about as big as 37 Volkswagen Beetle cars.
Whatever the case is, NASA’s size estimates show the space rock is bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza, Statue of Liberty and Big Ben’s clock tower in London.
READ MORE: How often do asteroids hit the Earth?
And if that was not terrifying enough, the asteroid is flying through the void of space at breakneck speeds of about 15.24km per second.
This translates to a velocity of 34,090.9mph or 54,864kph.
Thankfully the odds of EN striking the Earth anytime soon are absolutely minimal.
According to NASA, the asteroid is a prime example of so-called “Near-Earth Object” or NEO.
READ MORE: Watch major asteroid DESTROY Earth in fiery crash simulation
NEOs are all comets and asteroids on orbital paths, which intersect the Earth’s own journey around the Sun.
Occasionally, NEOs like Asteroid EN come very close to our homeworld and are picked up by radars and asteroid trackers for analysis.
NASA explained: “As they orbit the Sun, Near-Earth Objects can occasionally approach close to Earth.
“Note that a ‘close’ passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres.”
READ MORE: Asteroid warning: Danger of DEEP IMPACT is ‘before us’
On Wednesday, Asteroid EN will approach the Earth from a distance of about 0.02489 astronomical units (au).
Just one astronomical unit describes the average distance between the Sun and the Earth, which measures about 93 million miles (149.6 million km).
Asteroid EN will drastically trim this distance to just 2.3 million miles (3.72 million km).
In more earthly terms, this is roughly 9.69 times as far as the Moon is from Earth – a measurement known as Lunar Distances (LD).