This asteroid is approaching the planet very closely.

On Thursday night, one of the closest recorded asteroids will fly past Earth in the size of a delivery truck.

There is no danger of the asteroid impacting Earth, informed NASA, so it will be a close call.

The newly discovered asteroid, according to NASA, will fly 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometres) above the southernmost point of South America. The multitude of communication satellites circling overhead are ten times farther away than that.

At 7:27 p.m. EST, the closest approach will take place (9:27 p.m. local.)

Even if the space rock approached much closer, most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the larger fragments perhaps falling as meteorites, say scientists.

A strike was promptly ruled out by NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, known as Scout, according to its creator, engineer Davide Farnocchia, who works at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Farnocchia said in a statement that ‘despite the relatively limited sightings, it was nevertheless possible to predict that the asteroid will make an exceptionally close approach with Earth.’ In actuality, this is among the reported closest approaches of a known near-Earth asteroid.