Friday, February 15th, a 45 meter wide asteroid, known as space object 2012 DA14, will make a dangerously close, record setting fly-by with the Earth: missing contact by only 17,200 miles.
To put this into perspective, the most recent asteroid near miss occurred last year on December 12th, when space object 4179 Toutatis came within 2.3 lunar distances (549,367 miles) of the earth. In contrast, the inbound asteroid, which is about the size of a 15-story building, will come within only 17,200 miles of the earth: the equivalent of 0.045 lunar distances.
In a statement released last year by Paul Chodas of NASA.com, Chodas stated “Asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass inside the geosynchronous satellite ring.” This ‘ring’ is the location in which all of our satellites are found in orbit. Don Yeomans, an Asteroid Dynamics Specialist (ADS) of NASA, added that although “[the asteroid] will pass relatively close to satellites [orbiting] the earth,” the odds that it will slam into a satellite are “extremely remote.”
Hypothetically, comparing 2012 DA14’s size to past asteroid craters, scientists can hypothesize the amount of damage 2012 DA14 could have potentially created if it had been on a collision course with the earth. Meteor Crater, a three-quarter mile wide crater located in northern Arizona was created by a 30-meter wide asteroid approximately 50,000 years ago. Scientists have concluded that if the impact of space object 2012 DA14 was proportional to that of the asteroid which struck in Arizona, the impact would leave a crater about a mile wide in diameter and destroy everything within a four mile radius.
Luckily, NASA continues to stress that the asteroid “poses no threat of a deadly collision with the planet” and that the chances of collision are “1 in 83,000,000.” NASA concludes by saying that they “will keep [us] updated as [information] develops.”
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Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration