A newly discovered asteroid 2013EC will pass inside the moon orbit 4 March 2013 at 7:35 a.m. UTC (2:35 a.m. ET).

The asteroid, which was detected by Arizon's Mount Lemmon Observatory, is considered to be the size of the Russian asteroid that exploded over Central Russia and Urals region Feb. 15, 2013.

It was detected Saturday, with a confirmation that the asteroid will not hit the Earth and will make a safe pass by.

It will approach within 246,000 miles (396,000 kilometers) from the Earth, while the distance of the moon from the Earth will be between 225,622 and 252,088 miles (363,104 to 406,696 kilometers).

When the asteroid was about twice the distance of the moon, Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project had viewed the asteroid live.

"That we are finding all these asteroids recently does not mean that we are being visited by more asteroids, just that our ability to detect them has gotten so much better. Our technology has improved a lot over the past decades," Masi was quoted as saying in Universe Today.

More than a hundred thousand asteroids have been discovered so far. An asteroid Apophis, nicknamed as 'the doomsday asteroid', was observed by the European ESA's Herschel space observatory and a study claimed that there is 2.7 percent chance of it colliding with Earth. But further studies dismissed this and claim that the asteroid will definitely not strike Earth in 2036.

There are a few asteroid mining firms that start with an objective to protect Earth from the dangerous space rocks. One such asteroid mining company is the Deep Space industries that will launch a spacecraft in 2015 named 'FireFly' that will explore asteroids that fly near Earth.

"Fireflies could examine the potentially dangerous asteroids up close, gleaning insights about their composition that may be vital to deflection efforts," company officials were quoted as saying in International Business Times.