Follow

100 Foot Asteroid Makes Its Journey Past Earth

Photo Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

As reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, about 20 times a year, an asteroid passes Earth without touching it by a hair (or a few hundred thousand miles, that is). One of those events occurs today. The good news: it will safely move on its way without any impact on Earth.

This asteroid, 2014 DX110, is estimated to be about 100 feet (30 meters) across. Its closest approach to Earth will be at about 217,000 miles (about 350,000 kilometers) from Earth at about 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) on March 5. The average distance between Earth and its moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called “Spaceguard,” discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and identifies their close approaches to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

We wonder if one of these years, the asteroid will be close enough to impact us?

More From LATF USA

Scroll to Top