On Sunday, July 19, a platinum-loaded asteroid will be flying by earth. The asteroid 2011 UW-158 is said to have an around $5.4 trillion worth of platinum. The flyby can be seen live from 11pm UK time.

As per the Goldstone Radar Observatory, the asteroid’s size is around 1,500-feet wide. The flyby will happen within 1.5 million miles from earth, which is 30 times closer than our nearest planet. Owing to its platinum core, the asteroid is considered to be quite valuable.

Slooh, a project which links telescopes to the internet, will be broadcasting from the observatory in the Canary Islands. The broadcast will take place at 6pm ET on Sunday and Eric Edelman and Slooh astronomer Bob Berman will be hosting the event.

Berman was of the view, “What makes this unusual is the large amount of platinum believed to be lurking in the body of this space visitor. Can it be mined someday, perhaps not too far in the future?”

Planetary Resources have termed asteroids like this one as ‘X-type’ asteroids. The X-type asteroids are the ones that are made up of metal and look like the remnants of the large asteroids that separate into core and mantle.

Experts have affirmed that asteroid mining can prove a useful business for space agencies like NASA, which is planning to grab hold of an asteroid and get it into orbit around the soon, and astronauts will visit it and collected samples by 2025.