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Heads Up! Mountain-Sized Asteroid to Buzz Earth on Wednesday

© AP Photo / Reed Saxona meteor streaks through the sky over Joshua trees and rocks at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California's Mojave Desert
a meteor streaks through the sky over Joshua trees and rocks at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California's Mojave Desert - Sputnik International
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A huge asteroid is set to fly by the Earth on Wednesday, but don’t bother stocking your bunker, as it will pass well outside the orbit of our moon.

The fetchingly named 2014-JO25 asteroid will pass Earth at the comfortable remove of some 1.1 million miles, or about four times that of the distance between our planet and the moon.

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The largest space rock to pass Earth since 2004's 3.1-mile-wide monster 4179 Toutatis hurtled by, the spinning JO25 measures some 2000 feet in width, and has an unusually reflective surface, according to NASA.

"Although there is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid this size," stated the US space agency.

The zooming space rock will not be visible to the naked eye, but amatuer astronomers can view the event using telescopes or powerful binoculars.

NASA, ever vigilant to identify potential threats to the Earth from approaching asteroids, will monitor the flyby using radar telescopes in California and Puerto Rico, to "reveal surface details as small as a few meters."

The space agency has referred to the upcoming celestial event as an "outstanding opportunity to study this asteroid."

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