100-Foot Asteroid Will Make A Close Encounter With Earth In March
UPDATE March 5: NASA has changed the date of TX68's fly-by to March 8 and reissued assurances the asteroid will not hit Earth.
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- An asteroid almost the length of an Olympic-size swimming pool is on a path that will bring it close to Earth in about two weeks, according to scientists.
The asteroid has been dubbed 2016 TX68. It measures about 100 feet across and according to NASA, is on course to fly past Earth on March 7.
Astronomer Gerald McKeegan at Chabot Space and Science told the Contra Costa Times, "it's gonna be close."
How close?
Scientists have given a range: it could be as far out as 9 million miles, or as close as 11,000 miles.
"It's going to miss us," says McKeegan, "There's nothing to worry about."
Yet.
You see, this relatively small asteroid has been around a while. It flew past Earth, and missed by 1.3 million miles about two years ago. And while TX68 is a guaranteed miss this year, NASA says there's a remote chance of impact on September 28, 2017.
The odds are 1 in 250,000,000, but such a collision would be devastating enough to wipe out a city, or two. TX68 will fly by Earth again in 2046 and 2097, but the risk of impact diminishes with each fly-by.
"The possibilities of collision on any of the three future fly-by dates are far too small to be of any real concern," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. "I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more."
Still, Earthlings have reason to be a afraid when it comes to asteroids. After all, it was a massive, 5-mile wide asteroid that crashed to Earth 66 million years ago and set off the global "impact winter" that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Scientists assure us that nothing on the scale of a dinosaur-killing asteroid is heading our way, but just to be sure, NASA keeps careful track every rock hurtling through space. In fact, there are 5 asteroids approaching Earth in the next week. The closest will miss us by more than a million miles.
If you want to keep track, NASA has created an online compilation of past and future asteroids complete with names, dates, distances, diameters, and relative velocity. It's a very long list, with multiple entries for every month of the year.
It's been 3 years since an asteroid as big as TX68 has gotten this close to earth. And when it flies by at approximately 4:06 p.m. (PST) that Monday afternoon, scientists say it won't even be visible to the naked eye.
But if it makes you feel safer, you can always duck.
CBSSF.com writer, producer Jan Mabry is also executive producer and host of The Bronze Report. She lives in Northern California. Follow her on Twitter @janmabr.
