Megarock set to zip past Earth, no impact feared
Source: Agencies |
February 9, 2013, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A 45-METER-WIDE asteroid will come remarkably close to Earth next week, even closer than high-flying communication and weather satellites. It will be the nearest known flyby for an object of this size.
But don't worry. Scientists promise the megarock will be at least 27,518 kilometers away when it zips past next Friday.
"No Earth impact is possible," Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said on Thursday.
Even the chance of an asteroid-satellite run-in is extremely remote, Yeomans and other scientists noted. A few hundred satellites orbit at 35,886 kilometers, higher than the asteroid's path, although operators are being warned about the incoming object for tracking purposes.
"No one has raised a red flag, nor will they," Yeomans told reporters. "I certainly don't anticipate any problems whatsoever."
Impossible to see with the naked eye, the asteroid is considered small as these things go. By contrast, the one that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 9.6 kilometers wide.
Yet Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it's known for its discovery date, still could pack a wallop.
If it impacted Earth - which it won't, scientists were quick to add on Thursday - it would release the energy equivalent of 2.4 million tons of TNT and wipe out 1,942 square kilometers. That's what happened in Siberia in 1908, when forest land around the Tunguska River was flattened by a slightly smaller asteroid that exploded about five miles above ground.
But don't worry. Scientists promise the megarock will be at least 27,518 kilometers away when it zips past next Friday.
"No Earth impact is possible," Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said on Thursday.
Even the chance of an asteroid-satellite run-in is extremely remote, Yeomans and other scientists noted. A few hundred satellites orbit at 35,886 kilometers, higher than the asteroid's path, although operators are being warned about the incoming object for tracking purposes.
"No one has raised a red flag, nor will they," Yeomans told reporters. "I certainly don't anticipate any problems whatsoever."
Impossible to see with the naked eye, the asteroid is considered small as these things go. By contrast, the one that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was 9.6 kilometers wide.
Yet Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it's known for its discovery date, still could pack a wallop.
If it impacted Earth - which it won't, scientists were quick to add on Thursday - it would release the energy equivalent of 2.4 million tons of TNT and wipe out 1,942 square kilometers. That's what happened in Siberia in 1908, when forest land around the Tunguska River was flattened by a slightly smaller asteroid that exploded about five miles above ground.
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