A 130,000-tonne asteroid will fly closer to Earth today than any other object its size or larger has ever been predicted to come — without making a landing.
The flyby comes after a meteor streaked over the skies of Russian's Ural Mountains Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring hundreds, many of them hurt by broken glass.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about 45 metres in diameter, or just slightly smaller than the Epcot geodesic dome at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
The space rock is currently zooming toward Earth at 28,100 km/h, or 7.82 kilometres per second.
It will be just 27,000 kilometres above the Earth's surface — one-tenth of the distance between the Earth and the moon — when it makes its closest approach at 2:25 p.m. ET Friday.
At that point, it will be closer to the Earth's surface than the man-made communications and weather satellites in geosynchronous orbit, meaning the ones that complete their trip around the Earth once each day. Those satellites are located in a ring about 35,800 kilometres above us.
The asteroid will remain a comfortable distance away from the Earth itself, the International Space Station, which orbits just 386 kilometres above the Earth, and most other man-made satellites. Nor is there any chance it will hit the surface of the Earth, NASA says.
People will be able to watch the flyby live online starting 12 p.m. ET via telescopes in Australia and Europe.
Astronomers hope to observe the asteroid from around the world to get more information about its size, shape, how fast it is spinning and its makeup.
NASA said it plans to take radar images of the asteroid as it moves away from the Earth between Feb. 16 and 20 to get additional size and shape measurements.
DA14 is about 45 metres in diameter, making it about twice the width of a space shuttle. (Duk Han Lee/CBC)Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
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