Frozen assets whizz by

Asteroid mining could be an extremely usefuland lucrative business for agencies like Nasa. Photo / Thinkstock

A rock worth US$5.4 trillion is flying by Earth around noon today.

While asteroids might not look like much on the outside, underneath the surface of some is a treasure trove of platinum.

The precious metal is rare on Earth and 1000 cubic centimetres of platinum is worth close to US$1 million. And asteroids have a lot more than that.

In today's fly-by, asteroid 2011 UW-158, will still be 2.4 million km from Earth — that's about six times farther than the Moon — even at it's closest approach.

Online observatory Slooh will be using telescopes in the Canary Islands to spot the asteroid, and will broadcasting the views online (www.slooh.com).

Asteroid mining could be an extremely usefuland lucrative business for agencies like Nasa, which hopes to capture an asteroid and bring it in orbit around the Moon for future astronauts to collect samples as early as 2025.

Nasa says the materials frozen in asteroids could "be used in developing the space structures and in generating the rocket fuel that will be required to explore and colonise our solar system in the 21st century".