Earth won't be destroyed by huge asteroid next week, say scientists

Measuring 150 feet wide, asteroid 2012 DA14 could do some serious damage were it to strike our planet. But instead it will zip past us harmlessly, if somewhat closely. 

|
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013.

An asteroid will give Earth a historically close shave next week, but there's no chance that the space rock will slam into our planet on this pass, experts say.

The 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 will zoom within 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers) of our planet on Feb. 15, coming nearer than the ring of satellites in geosynchronous orbit. While the flyby will be the closest ever known in advance for such a large asteroid, there's no reason to retreat to the doomsday bunker.

"NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office can accurately predict the asteroid's path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth," officials at the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., wrote in a statement Friday (Feb. 1).

"Nevertheless, the flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close," the statement added. [Asteroid 2012 DA14's Feb. 15 Flyby: Fact vs. Fiction (Video)]

NASA will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) this Thursday (Feb. 7) to discuss the space rock's close flyby.

2012 DA 14 was discovered in February of last year by astronomers with the La Sagra Sky Survey in Spain. The near-Earth asteroid has recently been zipping around the sun once every 368 days, though next week's close pass will reduce its orbital period to 317 days, researchers said.

At its closest approach on Feb. 15, the space rock will be just 1/13th as far from Earth as the moon is. 2012 DA 14 will whiz by our planet quickly, zipping through space at about 17,400 mph (28,000 kph) as it makes its closest pass for at least the next 30 years.

The asteroid will present an intriguing target for skywatchers, becoming visible as a point of light through binoculars and small telescopes during the close encounter. The best observing will be from Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia, NASA officials said. (2012 DA 14 will have faded considerably by the time Earth's rotation brings the object into view for folks in the continental United States.)

Researchers at NASA and other institutions plan to take advantage of the flyby to learn more about 2012 DA14 and its orbit.

"Radar astronomers plan to take images of the asteroid about eight hours after closest approach using the Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert, which is part of NASA's Deep Space Network," space agency officials wrote in Friday's statement.

Several other known asteroids have given Earth an even closer shave than 2012 DA14 will, but those objects were all smaller. Asteroids of 2012 DA14's size probably make such close flybys once every 40 years and actually hit Earth every 1,200 years or so, researchers said.

Of course, other relatively large asteroids have probably zipped very close to Earth recently without being spotted. Astronomers have identified more than 9,000 near-Earth asteroids to date, but perhaps a million or more such space rocks are thought to exist.

If 2012 DA14 did strike our planet, it would likely cause serious damage on a local scale. An object of similar size flattened 800 square miles (2,000 square km) of forest when it exploded above Siberia's Podkamennaya Tunguska River in 1908.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Earth won't be destroyed by huge asteroid next week, say scientists
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0205/Earth-won-t-be-destroyed-by-huge-asteroid-next-week-say-scientists
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe