Asteroid twice the size of Statue of Liberty heading towards Earth in days

A LARGE asteroid is making its way towards Earth and should reach its closest approach in a matter of days.

Nasa has its eye on the large space rock as it’s considered a ‘near Earth object’.

GettyThe asteroid should shoot past us from a safe distance[/caption]

It’s called Asteroid 2017 XC62 and Nasa thinks it’s up to 623 feet wide.

That’s over twice the size of the Statue of Liberty.

The giant asteroid should shoot past us at 9,500 miles per hour on Monday.

The good news is it’s expected to stay a distance of 4.4 million miles away.

In comparison, the Moon is only about 238,900 miles from us.

The asteroid may seem pretty like it’s staying pretty far away but it’s actually quite close in terms of space.

Nasa considers anything passing near Earth’s orbit a Near-Earth Object (NEO).

Thousands of NEOs are tracked by scientists to monitor whether they’re on a collision course with our planet.

Any fast-moving space object that comes within 4.65 million miles is considered to be “potentially hazardous” by cautious space organizations.

One small change to their trajectories could spell disaster for Earth.

Asteroid 2017 XC62 isn’t expected to veer off course though.

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 to 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.

In other news, Nasa has revealed stunning footage of a solar flare in action.

China has built an ‘artificial moon’ to train its astronauts for future missions.

A huge asteroid was captured in eerie footage as it shot past Earth this week.