Large asteroid whizzes past Earth

A sizeable asteroid whizzed past Earth on Saturday, NASA reports, just hours after another one passed even closer, and both within a month of the Chelyabinsk meteor’s Earth strike.

The 140-meters-long and 64-meter-wide chunk of space debris passed at the speed of almost 43,000 km per hour about 950,000 km from our planet.

Some astronomers have compared its size to that of a skyscraper or a city block, which is eight times bigger than the one whose fragments smashed into the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on February 15.

Patrick Paolucci, the head of the Canary Islands-based Slooh robotic telescope service, said that in the event of a collision with Earth, the asteroid sighted on Saturday could have destroyed a whole city.