WASHINGTON (CNN) - An asteroid that could explode with the force of thousands of atomic bombs whizzed past our planet last month, according to NASA.
And it will come by again in less than twenty years.
The space agency puts the risk of a collision very low, since the September pass was about four-million miles away.
But that is close enough in space terms to reignite interest in an ambitious project to capture an asteroid.
Scientists could travel out there to visit this asteroid, and conduct experiments on it. The scientific community said this project will give them very important knowledge about new deep space technologies, propulsion systems, solar energy and all sorts of things that are used all the time on earth.
These findings will give scientists an idea of what to do, if an asteroid comes toward earth, and also find out what kinds of minerals are contained inside of these asteroids.
Scientists acknowledge this type of exploration will be informative, but expensive.
Copyright 2013 CNN. All rights reserved.