An Asteroid Just Barely Missed Earth, Flying Closer Than the Moon
And we spotted it only two days ago.
Getty Andrzej Wojcicki
By Jay Bennett
Jan 9, 2017
4.5k
An asteroid between 16 and 34 meters in diameter (36 and 112 feet) flew by the Earth this morning, about twice as close to our home planet as the moon. The asteroid, named 2017 AG13, was only discovered on Saturday, January 7, by the Catalina Sky Survey, according to space and weather publication The Watchers. It made it's closest approach at about 7:50 a.m. EST, according to JPL data.
If 2017 AG13 had slammed into the Earth, it likely would have been similar to the Chelyabinsk meteor that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia in February 2013, which was estimated at about 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter. A meteor of that size will mostly burn up in the atmosphere, but depending on the angle of entry, a significant amount of burning hot debris can make it through, possibly destroying property and injuring people as the Chelyabinsk meteor did. The blast of such a meteor burning up would be about 30 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped at Hiroshima, but at a distance of roughly 10 miles high, people on the ground would be mostly safe.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/solar-system/a24672/an-asteroid-just-missed-earth/
