© NASA/JPLThis NASA graphic depicts the orbit (blue curve) of asteroid 2011 EB47, which will pass close by Earth within the orbit of the moon on March 16, 2011, one day after it was discovered. The asteroid poses no threat of impacting Earth.
An asteroid the size of a house zoomed by Earth today (March 16), flying within the orbit of the moon just one day after astronomers spotting the space rock in the sky, NASA says.
The small asteroid 2011 EB74 was about 47 feet (14 meters) across and posed no threat of hitting Earth, since it was too small to survive the trip through the planet's atmosphere.
Instead, the asteroid passed our planet at a comfortable distance of about 203,000 miles (326,696 kilometers) when it made its closest approach at 5:49 p.m. EDT (2149 GMT), NASA officials said.
For comparison, the average distance between the Earth and the moon is about 238,000 miles (382,900 km). The flyby of 2011 EB74 is about 0.85 Earth-moon distances, officials said.
Astronomers discovered asteroid 2011 EB74 yesterday (March 15) as part of the ongoing Catalina Sky Survey, a project based at the University of Arizona to seek out previously unknown near-Earth objects like asteroids and comets.