• Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass 1.5 million miles away from Earth, meaning it will be 30 times closer than our nearest planet, according to Slooh Community Observatory.
  • The platinum-filled space rock which is also thought to contain other precious materials is only around half a mile wide, but its metallic core is estimated to weigh 100 million tonnes making it hugely valuable.
  • Asteroid mining could be an extremely useful business for agencies like NASA, which hopes to capture an asteroid and bring it in orbit around the Moon soon enough for future astronauts to visit it and collect samples by as early as 2025.

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