Voice of America, September 5, 2003

Mark this date on your calendar -- March 21, 2014.

That is when British astronomers say a huge newly-discovered asteroid could strike Earth.

The scientists in London said Tuesday that the asteroid is more than one kilometer wide with a mass of about two billion kilograms.

It could hit the planet at a speed of 120,000 kilometers per hour with an impact eight million times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

The scientists have classified the huge space rock as an event needing careful monitoring.

But they reassure people that the odds of the asteroid hitting Earth are one in 909,000.