Filtered By: Scitech
SciTech

Report: Bus-sized asteroid narrowly missed earth this weekend


A newly discovered asteroid the size of a school bus narrowly missed the Earth Friday, a space-oriented site reported Saturday (Manila time). Space.com said asteroid 2012 BX34 came between the Earth and the Moon Friday but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said it posed no threat. "The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT). The space rock is about 37 feet (11 meters) wide and would have broken apart in Earth's atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said," Space.com reported. But it quoted astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena as saying Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small, and "wouldn't get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try." According to Space.com, the asteroid passed Earth at a distance that is only about 0.17 times that between the Earth and the moon. In contrast, the moon typically orbits Earth at a distance of about 240,000 miles (386,000 km). "Asteroids this small are hard to spot, and luckily they pose the least concern. Our goal is to find the bigger ones," Asteroid Watch scientists said. Last September, NASA said it has spotted about 90 percent of the largest asteroids - the size of a mountain or bigger - that can come near Earth. It confirmed some 911 such giant space rocks, even as astronomers estimate there are about 981 big near-Earth objects that occasionally come close to Earth. Space.com quoted astronomers as saying Asteroid 2012 BX34 was the second space rock to fly relatively close by Earth this week. They said another small asteroid — 2012 BS1 — passed by Earth at a range of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million km), which is about 3.1 times the Earth-moon distance. "Asteroid 2012 BS1 is so small (about 7 meters) it would disintegrate in our atmosphere if it were to come close to Earth," the Asteroid Watch team wrote. Space.com said experts estimate asteroids about 460 feet (140 m) across and bigger can cause widespread devastation near their impact sites, though a larger space rock would be required to cause destruction on a global scale. This week, scientists from around the world are also discussing how Earth should respond to the threat of an asteroid impact. Space.com said the so-called NEOShield project is a European commission led by the German Aerospace Center and includes scientists from universities and industrial partners in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States and Russia. Meanwhile, tech site Mashable said the incident made US President Barack Obama’s priority for NASA in the next 10 years to land astronauts on an asteroid seem like making a lot more sense. "Not only are there trillions of dollars in mineral wealth in those rocks, but the more we get to know them, the better we can detect and deflect their orbits," it said. — LBG, GMA News

Tags: nasa, asteroid,
LOADING CONTENT