ET: BOSTON: A closely tracked asteroid, about 150-feet (45-metres) wide, whizzed safely past Earth on Friday, the same day a much smaller, previously undetected meteor hit Russia, injuring nearly 1,000 people.
Live images from a telescope at the Gingin Observatory in western Australia showed the asteroid looking like a white streak, moving across against a backdrop of black sky.
Astronomers said the object’s speed and proximity made it a challenge to track, because telescopes had to be aimed precisely or risked missing it.
The asteroid, dubbed 2012 DA 14, passed around 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometres) above the Earth at the time of closest approach, about 2:25 pm EST (1925 GMT), NASA said.
The US space agency had said in a statement on its website that this was “the closest-ever predicted approach to Earth for an object this large.”
Categories: Europe