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Space/Science

Closest asteroid yet flies past Earth

From NASA email:

This object is listed on our Earth Close Approach Tables:

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/close.html

2003 SQ222 passed by the Earth at 0.2 lunar distances. It is only
about 3 to 6 meters in diameter.

Ron Baalke

Jeff Hecht
New Scientist
October 2, 2003

An asteroid about the size of a small house passed just 88,000 kilometres
from the Earth by on Saturday 27 September - the closest approach of a
natural object ever recorded. Geostationary communication satellites circle
the Earth 42,000km from the planet's centre.

The asteroid, designated 2003 SQ222, came from inside the Earth's orbit and
so was only spotted after it had whizzed by. The first sighting was on
Sunday 28 by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search program in
Arizona, US.

The asteroid's 1.85-year orbit is quite eccentric, indicating it cannot be a
man-made object, Marsden says. He estimates the asteroid measured less than
10 metres. This is too small to have posed a danger to Earth, although it
would have made a spectacular fireball had it entered the atmosphere.

Full story here:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994228

One of these years those small house sized undetected asteroids is going to impact Earth without warning. Lets hope it's only a spectacular fireball we experience.

SteveS

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