NASA is expecting a huge asteroid to shoot past Earth this weekend.
According to the US space agency, asteroid 2022 GU6 could be up to 492 feet wide.
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That would make it bigger than the Statue of Liberty.
New York’s famous landmark stands at 305 feet when you include its pedestal.
The large space rock is predicted to come within 750,000 miles of Earth.
That’s pretty close in terms of space so Nasa has flagged it as a ‘close approach’.
The close encounter is expected to happen this Sunday at 8:01am ET.
An asteroid of this size would cause some serious damage if it hit Earth.
Fortunately, Nasa isn’t expecting it to deviate off course.
Nasa keeps a table of all ‘close approach’ asteroids that it’s watching.
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If an asteroid comes within 4.65million miles of Earth and is over a certain size, it’s considered “potentially hazardous” by cautious space agencies.
Sunday’s asteroid should rocket past us at 18,000 miles per hour.
Plans to save Earth from asteroids
Some experts are worried that Earth isn’t yet ready to defend itself from potentially deadly asteroids.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk once sparked concern by tweeting: “a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defence.”
Nasa is looking into some defence methods though.
It recently launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission.
Nasa said: “DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid’s motion in space through kinetic impact.”
The DART craft should slam into a small asteroid called Dimorphos in September with the aim of moving it off course.
