A Big Asteroid Is Coming Close To Earth. Be Excited, Not Afraid.

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This is the first time an asteroid of its size is coming close enough that people in parts of Western Europe and Africa will see it soaring across the sky like a fast-moving star, no fancy telescopes or binoculars required. Around 2 billion people will get to witness this rare event.

The asteroid is named Apophis, and it will come closer to Earth than the satellites that make weather monitoring possible and about 10 times closer than the moon.

"Nature is performing this once-per-several-thousand-years experiment for us. We have to figure out how to watch," said Richard P. Binzel, a professor of planetary science at MIT.

Apophis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study asteroids like never before. Getting a close-up look at Apophis will help scientists figure out how to protect our planet against an asteroid that wants to throw a punch at Earth in the future.

But missions to space take years to develop, and there are less than five years before Apophis makes its close approach to Earth.

"We're running out of time," said Jason Kalirai, executive for space formulation at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Apophis is about as wide as the Eiffel Tower is tall. Though scientists do not have pictures of the asteroid yet, they have used radar data to surmise that Apophis is roughly peanut shaped.