An asteroid the size of three football pitches is set to make a close brush with Planet Earth early on Tuesday morning.
Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat of actually hitting the planet, but the online Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid as it passes by Earth on Tuesday morning.
The live Slooh webcast will start 02:00 GMT on February 18, and you can watch it on YouTube.
Scientists estimate that 2000 EM26 is around 885 feet (270 meters) in diameter, and it is whizzing through the solar system at a break-neck 27,000 mph (12.37km/s), according to Slooh. During its closest approach, the asteroid will fly about 8.8 lunar distances from Earth.
One year ago, on February 15, 2013, the world witnessed two amazing events – one expected and the other not. Astronomers anticipated the arrival of super-close asteroid 2012 DA14 – a 40,000-ton space rock, 98 ft (30 m) in diameter, due to miss Earth by a measly 17,200 miles (27,680 km) – closer even than our geosynchronous satellites.
In fact, NEA 2012 DA14 was the closest object of such size to fly past Earth in our lifetimes. Slooh successfully tracked DA14 live from its Canary Island observatory using special imaging techniques.
On that same day, however, something else unexpectedly tore through the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, damaging thousands of houses, breaking innumerable windows, and causing injuries from broken glass.
This object, later discovered to be an asteroid, was 65 ft (20 m) in diameter and exploded 18 miles above Siberia releasing the equivalent energy of more than 20 atomic bombs (approximately 460 kilotons of TNT).
While analysts continue to debate the significance of the event, many believe the residents of Chelyabinsk were extremely lucky to escape this celestial encounter with no loss of life. To commemorate the February 15 event, the Russian government announced that ten gold medals for winners on February 15th at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics will be embedded with Chelyabinsk meteor fragments.