"The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Saturday, Dec. 22, at a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometres)", NASA said in a report published on 21 December.
Because of its large size, it is classified as"potentially hazardous asteroid", but NASA believes that it does not pose a threat in the near future.
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Scientists note that the 2003 SD220 asteroid looks like a hippopotamus swimming in a river. NASA has called the asteroid "holiday" because it appeared shortly before Christmas.
The asteroid 2003 SD220 was discovered on 29 September 2003, by astronomers at the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS) in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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