NASA says asteroid 'closer to Earth than the moon’ will fly-by us in weeks

NASA has said that an asteroid "closer to the earth than the moon" will fly-by us in weeks.

Making its way past our pale blue dot at a speed of 18,253 miles per hour, the 2011 ES4 asteroid is estimated to measure up to 49 meters.

While this isn't particularly large for an asteroid, what makes this one notable is how close it will come to the Earth, and it's very close.

NASA astronauts shared their workouts on the ISS to help those in isolation:

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According to NASA, the asteroid will be zipping past the Earth on September 1 at 10:49 am EDT (15:49pm BST) at a distance of 0.00048 astronomical units, which in layman's terms is the equivalent of 44,618 miles.

To put the difference between the asteroid and the moon into context, the moon is around 238,855 miles away.

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The 2011 ES4 asteroid has been described as "potentially hazardous" by NASA, but because its diameter is so small, it's not been classified as a direct threat to our planet.

The asteroid is listed on the space agency's 'close Approaches' database, according to its Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), but before you start freaking out (it is 2020, after all), 'near-Earth object' (NEO) is simply one that's in the sun's orbit.

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While in the context of space NEOs are close to the Earth, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are threats and a NASA spokesperson said that a comet or asteroid can be classed a NEO if it comes within 1.3 astronomical units of the sun on its approach.

One astronomical unit is the equivalent of 93 million miles, so in short, that's not very close at all. However, it is worth noting that the 2011 ES4 is coming closer than any asteroid on this list.

But when it was first discovered back in March 2011, hence its namesake, it actually wasn't very close to the Earth at all and was 5,000,000 miles from Earth.

It's been classed as an Apollo asteroid since then which means that it has a very wide orbit between the Earth and the sun.