Asteroid Whizzing By Earth Could Come Closer Than The Moon

An asteroid nearly two times the size of a meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013 will make a close flyby of Earth next month, NASA says, but it doesn’t pose any threat to our home planet, at least this year.

Scientists have estimated that the asteroid could pass as far as 11 million miles or as close as 11,000 miles to Earth. For comparison, the average distance from Earth to the moon is 238,900 miles.

The asteroid is about 100 feet in diameter, NASA says. If it entered Earth’s atmosphere, NASA says it would produce a burst of energy twice as strong as that caused by the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was 65-feet wide and shattered windows, damaged buildings and created a flash of light 30 times as strong as the sun over Russia in 2013.

Asteroid 2013 TX68, as NASA calls it, was first discovered in 2013 when it came within 1.3 million miles of Earth. Scientists were only able to observe it for a few days at the time.

The limited data available on the asteroid’s orbit is the reason for the huge range of how close it could pass to Earth. NASA says there is absolutely no chance that it will strike Earth this year.

Two years later is a (slightly different) story.

NASA says that when it circles back into Earth’s neighborhood in 2017, the odds are 1-in-250-million of an impact.

Remember the record Powerball jackpot that had the nation’s attention last month? Those winning odds were about 1-in-290 million.

Flybys in 2046 and 2097 also have an extremely remote chance of impact, NASA says.

“The possibilities of collision on any of the three future flyby dates are far too small to be of any real concern,” Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s NASA’s Center for Near Earth Objects Studies, said in a NASA press release. “I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more.”

Image: A meteor over Russia lit up the Earth’s skies in 2013. Credit: Alex Alishevskikh, Creative Commons