Near Earth Asteroid to pass closer than GPS satellites

The third animation (due to speed) looks like some near misses for sats.

If it hit, even at 10 feet in size after entry, it'd make a mess where it hit...

I did see that on tv and thought "did I hear right?" That sounded mighty close.

...but also kind of scary. Looks VERY close!

neat animation too.

Thanks for posting this - very nice site and interesting news. Would be great to see an increase in monitoring and joint asteroid deflection efforts getting ramped up, though that is probably beyond the cooperative capabilities (and budgets) of our leaders at this time.

Thanks for the posting and link.

That is a very close distance!! Too close for me actually.

GPS satellites orbit at a height of about 12,000 miles (19,300 km) and orbit the earth once every 12 hours.

An object a little closer than 12,000 miles is still a long way away.

As you may know, the asteroid, in it's travels, is decaying, little by little, out-gassing.

So if you are ever in an elevator with me and you detect a funny smell, you can be assured it is due to the asteroid passing so close.

Gary Hayman

Asteroids are a part of many apocalyptic movies and many say with the amount of space debris out there, it isn't a matter of if one will hit the earth it is when.

Living in a place known as the Dinosaur Capital of the World, we have a number of people that take a professional interest in asteriods. After all, most paleontologists believe that an asteriod hit was responsible for the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

It is really interesting - and scary - to realize how often and CLOSE these things come... and to realize what could happen as a result of a speck of rock coming out of the sky

National Geographic sez "Hold On" there's a 300,000 year difference between the two events.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-dinos...

But, I don't know. I wasn't there. I had gone out in the lobby for popcorn.

GARYteroid

Don't you know popcorn is habit forming !!!!!!

Asteroids, meteriors and who knows what else are just a part of the greater world we live in. And it is so very cool to be able to track and predict them with our technology.
Somehow people have developed a mindset that the way things are Right Now is the way they always need to be.
C'mon....the nature of Nature is constant change. But there is no political advantage or tax angle to that fundamental truth.

so my paper said this morning. The report said there was a recent one even closer.

Like most cataclysmic events, there is likely no SINGLE cause for the dinosaur extinction.

But one of the paleontologists gave a presentation to elementary school kids here recently, and the boys blamed the girls for the extinction! They thought the area that the asteriod hit was called the Chicks Club Impact Crater

One of the earth’s closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years took place Monday afternoon. But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the ‘cosmic close call’, the encounter was so close that Earth’s gravity sharply altered the asteroid’s trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.

2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid was only sighted for the first time last Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.

According to Minor Planet Center’s ranking charts 2011 MD’s trip was the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event.
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Closest.html

it was me, okay, I killed the d@mn dinosaurs...I was having a bad day...ever try to clean pterodactyl crap off your windshield...okay, I feel better now

Thanks for the info.

Cheers

...you were going to mention baked beans....

it was Raid

So, you're the one!

Talk about 7,000 miles ....

What about a 1,100 FOOT miss?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/science/space/29junk.html?...

Gary Hayman

I always wondered about the term "near miss" Seems to me that would be a hit.