A scientist advises people not to panic because the huge, non-threatening rock on the planet is making its closest approach to Sunday.
The largest asteroid sweeping past Earth this year is the closest way to Sunday.
But scientists have told humans not to panic because it poses no threat to the planet.
The giant space rock, 2001 FO32 researchers say, has a diameter of hundreds of meters and will come to Earth at a distance of about two million kilometers (1.2 million miles), the U.S. space agency NASA said.
That distance is more than five times as far as Earth to the moon.
“It’s stable, it’s not on a dangerous course,” Detlef Koschny, an asteroid expert at the European Space Agency, told dpa news agency, saying the celestial material will be visible to non-professional astronauts with the right equipment. .
“We really know the 2001 FO32 orbital orbit around the sun, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been following ever since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Object Studies near Earth, which is controlled by NASA’s Jet Moving Laboratory in Southern California.
This special asteroid, which orbits the sun once every 810 days, flies past the Earth at a speed of about 124,000kph (77,000mph).
After its harmless orbit on Sunday, 2001 FO32 will continue its lone voyage, not to come so close to Earth again until 2052, NASA said.
Scientists plan to use the flyby to study the asteroid more closely.
“We don’t know much about it,” Koschny said, adding that a close look at the 2001 FO32 will help astronauts working on asteroid-reducing projects.