New Delhi:  A bus-sized newly discovered asteroid today came extremely close to the Earth, coming much nearer than the Moon, space scientists said.

However, the space rock posed no danger of impacting the Earth.

"The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 59,044 km of Earth at about 9 pm," Planetary Society of India Director N Raghunandan Kumar said.

The moon orbits Earth at an average distance of about 386,000 km.

The space rock, first observed on January 25, was about 11 metres wide, making it much too small to pose a threat to Earth, Kumar said.

Asteroids are a class of small solar system bodies in the orbit around the sun. The larger asteroids are called planetoids.

Asteroid 2012 BX34 revolves around the sun every 242 days.

(Image courtesy NASA)

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