Free Republic

One of the most concerning things about the Chelyabinsk event has to do with the ease at which the asteroid evaded our detection systems in use at the time. On the same day the Chelyabinsk asteroid exploded over eastern Russia, NASA had been tracking... 2012 DA14, as it passed within just 17,200 miles from Earth. March 2023...chief scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, presented new findings on impact features at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at Johnson Space Center. Based on recent satellite data, Garvin thinks previously hidden features of ancient impact features could indicate they are much...

Explanation: There it goes. That small spot moving in front of background stars in the above video is a potentially dangerous asteroid passing above the Earth's atmosphere. This past Friday, the 50-meter wide asteroid 2012 DA14 just missed the Earth, passing not only inside the orbit of the Moon, which is unusually close for an asteroid of this size, but also inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. Unfortunately, asteroids this big or bigger strike the Earth every 1000 years or so. Were 2012 DA14 to have hit the Earth, it could have devastated a city-sized landscape, or stuck an ocean...

Current and planned efforts focus on larger objects Scientists have begun piecing together the characteristics of the meteor that exploded over Russia on the morning of February 15, using data from seismic instruments that track earthquakes and microphones designed to detect sonic booms from nuclear explosions. Unlike the asteroid DA14, which narrowly but predictably missed Earth later that day, the meteor was too small to detect before its contrail appeared in the dawn skies over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Yet even an object too small to detect can produce an impressive amount of destruction. The meteor was 15 meters...

MOSCOW — A Russian emergencies official says at least one meteorite has fallen in Chelyabinsk region.

Explanation: Rocks from space hit Earth every day. The larger the rock, though, the less often Earth is struck. Many kilograms of space dust pitter to Earth daily. Larger bits appear initially as a bright meteor. Baseball-sized rocks and ice-balls streak through our atmosphere daily, most evaporating quickly to nothing. Significant threats do exist for rocks near 100 meters in diameter, which strike the Earth roughly every 1000 years. An object this size could cause significant tsunamis were it to strike an ocean, potentially devastating even distant shores. A collision with a massive asteroid, over 1 km across, is more...

U.S. space agency Nasa has released a frightening new video showing just how close a massive asteroid will come to slamming into the Earth next week. There are just seven days left until the 150ft-wide, 130,000 ton asteroid buzzes past our planet so close its trajectory will take it inside the orbit of communications and weather satellites. It will be the nearest known flyby for an object of this size. But scientists promise the threatening space rock come no nearer than 17,100 miles from Earth when it zips past next Friday. 'No Earth impact is possible,' said Donald Yeomans, manager...

An asteroid about half the size of a football field will hurtle past Earth on February 15, NASA scientists report. While there is no chance the flying rock will collide with our planet, it will break the record for the closest fly-by of an asteroid its size. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth," said Don Yeomans, a planetary scientist with NASA's Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The 50-metre wide asteroid, known as 2012 DA14, will come within 28,000 kilometres of Earth's surface,...

To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation. ­NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months. The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower...