Asteroid to fly between Earth and the Moon LIVE in fourth near miss of the year

An asteroid roughly the size of a double decker bus will make a close pass of the Earth this evening

An asteroid will fly between the Earth and the Moon tonight, just days after its discovery.

Asteroid 2017 BS32 – which is estimated to be around the size of a double decker bus, with a diameter of between 11 and 25 metres (36 to 82 feet) – was first spotted on January 30.

According to the website Watchers.News , the asteroid has an orbit that stretches from inside Venus’s plane all the way out to Mars.

It will pass closest to Earth at 20:23 GMT on February 2, when it will come more than twice as close to the Earth as the Moon – a distance of 161 280 km (100 214 miles).

This is the fourth time since the beginning of the year that an asteroid will fly between the Earth and the Moon just days after its discovery.

On January 25, an asteroid the size of a killer whale flew by the Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, coming 30% closer to the Earth than the Moon.

Earlier that same month, an asteroid roughly the same size as the one that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 sped past the Earth at about 10 miles per second.

It raises a few eyebrows when we see a number of close approaching NEAs over such a short period of time,” said Paul Cox, astronomer at Slooh, which operates a number of automated observatories.

At the moment of the asteroid’s approach, Slooh will point its telescopes at BS32 in an attempt to capture the fast moving space rock as it flies between Earth and the Moon.

A live stream of the event, together with commentary will be available to view in the player at the top of this article from 20:00 GMT.