Asteroid worth £3 TRILLION in precious metals set to pass Earth on Sunday

www.dailymail.co.uk ^ | Updated: 11:50 EST, 17 July 2015 | By Jack Millner

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An asteroid worth a potential £3.5 trillion ($5.4 trillion) is due to pass by Earth on Sunday, and you can watch it live from 11pm UK time (6.30pm ET).

Asteroid 2011 UW-158's fly-by will be streamed live on the internet from an observatory in the Canary Islands.

The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, because it is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum that the company might one day want to exploit.

Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30 times closer than our nearest planet.

It is less than half a mile (1km) across, but is thought to be immensely valuable because of its platinum core.

An organisation call Slooh, that links telescopes to the internet for public viewing, will be providing the images live from their website, along with a discussion about the asteroid and its possible value to space prospectors. 'It's always fun when an asteroid whooshes past our world so the Slooh telescopes will be watching live when asteroid 2011 UW-158 passes 30 times closer to us than the nearest planet, on July 19.’ Slooh Astronomer Bob Berman said.

'What makes this unusual is the large amount of platinum believed to be lurking in the body of this space visitor.

‘Can it be mined someday, perhaps not too far in the future?'

Planetary Resources considers asteroids like 2011 UW-158 as ‘X-type’ asteroids.

X-type asteroids are composed primarily of metal, and appear to be the remnants of large asteroids that fully separated into core and mantle.

Many of these were destroyed in huge collisions in the solar system’s early history, leaving just their tough metallic cores.

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