Dead Comet Making 'Potentially Hazardous' Earth Pass Thursday

A massive dead comet will be making a "potentially hazardous" pass by Earth on Thursday, tech website CNET.com reported.

Measuring more than 2,800 feet, which is bigger than the towering Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, the extinguished comet known as Asteroid 2017 YE5 will whizz by our planet with 3.7 million miles to spare.

That distance isn’t really close enough to warrant any concern about impact, scientists say, but because of its size they still consider its passing as "potentially hazardous."

The comet is thought to come from the Jupiter-family, NASA said. It was first spotted on Dec. 21, 2017, and its orbit indicates it last came this close to Earth in 1908, with its next close shave expected to occur again in 2189.

It’s a common occurrence for asteroids to zip past Earth, space experts say, and 2017 YE5 just happens to be bigger than most others.

Most recently, Asteroid 2018 LA slammed into Earth's atmosphere, but researchers said it was so small that it likely burned up before it ever made the planet's surface.

Astronomers said the six-foot wide asteroid presumably burned up over the African country of Botswana before impact.

In May, an asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty, which was lost for eight years and then rediscovered, made headlines when it flew by Earth in what was considered "one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size."

In April, an asteroid the size of a football field scraped by Earth just hours after it was first spotted by a NASA-affiliated observatory in Arizona in April. Surprise.

• 6 Celebrity Asteroid Near Misses
• Meteor in Arizona That Lit Up Sky Actually an Asteroid, NASA Confirms