Did you know that an asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed the Earth? It was about 48,800 miles from Earth when it zipped past early Monday. It is named 2009 DD45. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported the near miss. That is about a fifth of the distance to the moon, and is just twice as high as the obits of some telecommunications satellites.
Astronomer, Timothy Spahr of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said that was pretty darn close. However, it was not as close as a tiny meteroid 2004 FU162, which came within 4,000 miles in 2004.
The space rock measured between 69 feet and 154 feet in diameter. The Planetary Society said that made it about the same size as the asteroid that exploded over Siberian in l908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest. They started tracking it in late February and Spahr knew within an hour of that discovery that it would pose no threat to Earth.
Last year, the asteroid 2008 TC3 harmlessly burned up in Earth's atmosphere over Africa 19 hours after it was discovered. The next time an object will get closer to Eath will be in 2029 when an 885 foot asteroid called 9942 Apophis comes within 20,000 miles.
No comments:
Post a Comment