Near Miss
2006-07-03 17:19:08.113143+02 by petronius 1 comments
You can make coffee now: according to the Guardian, at about 5:30 this morning Greenwich time, asteroid XP 41 passed the Earth at a distance slightly greater than that of the Moon. The size of the body is not known exactly, but at a minimum of 1,000 ft across, a collision would have been catastrophic. Scientists hope to use radar to measure the asteroid and its orbit with more precision.
Apparently this was not a surprise; the near miss orbit of XP 41 was already known to astronomers. In 2029 another asteroid is expected to pass within a mere 20,000 miles. Hmmm...I wonder if we could catch it?