PARIS, Jan 23: A huge asteroid will zoom past Earth next week at such a close distance that amateur astronomers should be able to spot it, specialists said on Wednesday.

Measuring between 150 and 600 metres across, asteroid 2007 TU24 would inflict devastating regional damage were it to hit Earth, but there is no risk of any collision, they said.

It will fly by Earth at 0834 GMT (1.34pm PST) on Tuesday (Jan 29) at a distance of around 534,000 kilometres at its closest point, according to a Near Earth Object (NEO) database compiled by Italy’s University of Pisa.

“For a brief time the asteroid will be observable in dark and clear skies with amateur telescopes of three inches (7.5 centimetres) or larger,” NASA said on its NEO site (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news157.html).

The asteroid will make the closest approach of any known potentially hazardous asteroid of this size or larger until 2027, NASA said, adding that objects of this size come close to Earth about every five years or so on average.

The rock was discovered only last October under a surveillance programme run by the University of Arizona.

According to the Minor Planet Center of the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU), the closest detected approach by an asteroid was on March 31, 2004, by FU162, which came within 6,500kms of Earth.

The day after 2007 TU24's terrestrial flyby, asteroid 2007 WD5 is expected to come within 26,000kms of Mars, a distance that is less than a whisker in space terms.

The WD5 ignited a brief surge of excitement among astronomers after it was discovered in November.

Initial computations of its orbit gave a roughly 1-in-25 chance that it might whack into Mars on Jan 30, providing a celestial show that could be monitored by US and European craft there.

Measuring about 50 metres across, it would have delivered an impact equivalent to a three-megaton nuclear weapon. A rock of this size exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, felling around 80 million trees over 2,200 square kilometres.

But further calculation showed that the hoped-for big splat would be a big miss.

“It’s highly unlikely that it’s going to hit,” said NEO expert Benny Peiser of Liverpool John Moores University in northwestern England, as the odds of a collision by WD5 fell to around 0.01 per cent, or one in 10,000.—AFP