NASA Shows Us An Asteroid’s Close Encounter with Earth [VIDEO]

A small asteroid came within less than 20,000 miles of our planet last month, enough to make some skywatchers sweat a little.

It's one thing to hear on the radio or read on a website that a small asteroid is going to buzz the Earth. (The asteroid pictured above is not the asteroid that came close to Earth, last month, but an image from the NASA collection.)

It's something else altogether to actually see it.

A small asteroid buzzed by Earth last month at a distance of roughly 18,000 miles . The moon is about 240,000 miles away, as a point of reference. And “small” for an asteroid meant about 160 feet in diameter.

NASA has released footage of the asteroid flyby captured by the infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. The image appears to be tracking with the telescope, moving at about 11 miles per second.

And if it happens again, we can always call on Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.