A huge asteroid, longer than the length of ten buses in a rowheading towards Earth.

NASA says the asteroid, scientifically named 2013 WV44, will pass by on Wednesday. It is estimated to be up to 160 meters in diameter, which means it is that much bigger from the London Eye (394 feet) and Big Ben (310 feet).

The image from the Daily Mail captures the sizes:

It will travel at a speed of 11.8 km per second or more than 26,000 miles per hour, about 34 times the speed of sound. Even though it is moving towards Earth, it will never get closer than 0.02334 AU or about 2.1 million miles.

Despite being about nine times further away than the moon, the asteroid is classified as a near-Earth object (NEO) and is being tracked by NASA. NEOs are comets and asteroids that are pushed by the gravitational pull of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter Earth’s neighborhood,” NASA said.

Consisting primarily of water ice with embedded dust particles, comets first formed in the cold outer planetary systemwhile most of the rocky asteroids formed in the hotter inner solar system between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

According to NASA, scientific interest in comets and asteroids is largely due to their state because they remain relatively unchanged remnants of the solar system’s formation process about 4.6 billion years ago.”

A NEO is defined as such when it is within 1.3 AU (120.8 million miles) of the sun and therefore within 0.3 AU (27.8 million miles) of Earth’s orbit. Although 2013 WV44 will be 2.1 million miles away, that’s relatively close in astronomical terms.

Altough it is not classified as a PHA, i.e. potentially hazardous asteroids, its size is relatively large, said Japanese astronomer Atsuo Asami.

Almost all NEOs are near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), although comets (NECs) also exist.