Asteroid alert: A 47,500MPH asteroid is rapidly approaching Earth – But will it hit us?

At the lower end of NASA’s scale, Asteroid BQ11 is about four times as long as a London doubledecker bus.

Asteroids smaller than this are estimated to strike the planet once or twice every century on average.

One such object struck the skies over Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast in 2013, injuring more than 1,000 people when it blew out windows in a large radius.

But does NASA expect Asteroid BQ11 to hit our planet this weekend?

At its closest, NASA said the space rock will approach Earth from a distance of about 0.03614 astronomical units (au).