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rfmcdonaldThis news worries me. As I think it should.
The asteroid that created the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is estimated to have been a bit more than 150 feet in diameter, by comparison.
The second small asteroid to pass near Earth in a single day will make its closest approach later today, scientists say.
The approximately 30-foot (10-meter) asteroid, dubbed 2010 RF12, will pass within about 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) of Earth at 5:12 p.m. ET.
About 12 hours earlier, at 5:51 a.m. ET, a 50-foot (15-meter) asteroid called 2010 RX30 passed within about 154,000 miles (248,000 kilometers) of our planet—roughly halfway between Earth and the moon.
Both asteroids' paths are too far away to endanger Earth or any satellites, said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"Even if they were to hit Earth, these two asteroids would disintegrate in the atmosphere," he said. "We'd get a few meteorites out of them, but there wouldn't be any damage to the ground."
Both asteroids were discovered on Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona.
The asteroid that created the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is estimated to have been a bit more than 150 feet in diameter, by comparison.
