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Subscribe to RSSOn Feb. 15 a giant asteroid will be visible as it passes very close to Earth, and there are also predictions of a large solar storm. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
It may sound unsettling to hear that a potential killer known as asteroid 2012 DA14 will be coming closer to Earth than telecommunication satellites on Feb. 15, but don't panic: Earth's gravitational field will give it such a kick that we'll never have to worry about it again.
"It has been getting closer to Earth for quite a while," Donald Yeomans, the head of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters on Thursday during a preview for the close encounter. "This is the closest predicted [flyby] for this object both in the past and in the future."
NASA's calculations show that Earth's gravity will perturb the 150-foot-wide (45-meter-wide) asteroid's orbital period, which had been getting close to Earth's own one-year orbit. "Earth is going to put this one in an orbit that is considerably safer than the orbit it has been in," Yeomans said.
That makes 2012 DA14 nothing more than one of the universe's most vivid reminders that we live in a cosmic shooting gallery. The rocky asteroid's orbit is so well-known that Yeomans can say it will pass by Earth at a minimum distance of 17,200 miles (27,700 kilometers), plus or minus 100 miles. That's in the "sweet spot" between GPS satellite orbits (6,000 to 12,000 miles) and geosynchronous telecom satellites (22,000 miles), Yeomans said.
He said that there's an "extremely remote" chance that 2012 DA14 could hit a satellite on its way in or out of Earth's neighborhood, and that satellite operators were being given orbital tracking data as a precaution. But William Ailor, an expert on orbital debris at The Aerospace Corp., told NBC News that the chance is hardly worth worrying about.
"The fact is, we don't have collisions very often, even among the satellites that are there all the time," Ailor said. "Space is very active, but there's a lot of it above us."
NASA video previews the Feb. 15 close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14, which will bring a 150-foot-wide space rock within the orbit of Earth's telecommunication satellites.
Yeomans said the prime viewing for 2012 DA14 will be available from eastern Europe, Asia and Australia, where it will be dark during the time of closest approach at 2:24 p.m. ET Feb. 15. But even at its brightest, the asteroid will still be too dim to see with the naked eye. You'd need a binoculars or a small telescope to spot it, and you'd have to know exactly where to look from your locale. During the close approach, the asteroid will be moving across a patch of sky nearly twice as wide as the full moon every minute. "That's very fast," Yeomans said.
If you're lucky enough to catch sight of the asteroid, don't expect to see any detail. "What you would see through a small telescope would be something that looked just like a star, a small point of light," said Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Yeomans said the asteroid will be passing by at the speed of 17,500 mph (7.8 kilometers per second). "That's roughly eight times the velocity of a bullet from a high-speed rifle," he said.
Scientists aren't even sure exactly what 2012 DA14 is made of, although they suspect it's a rocky L-type asteroid. To get better information about its size and composition, experts plan to use radio telescopes in New Mexico and California as well as other astronomical assets.
NASA's Donald Yeomans answers the most commonly asked questions about the Feb. 15 close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14.
2012 DA14 was discovered less than a year ago by a Spanish team at the La Sagra Astronomical Observatory, and initially stirred up a wave of doomsday worries. Fortunately, NASA quickly analyzed the observations and ruled out any chance of a collision.
Experts estimate that 150-foot-wide asteroids zoom as close to Earth as 2012 DA14 will every 40 years or so, and actually hit Earth every 1,200 years.
If the asteroid were on a collision course, Feb. 15 would have been a very bad day: A rocky asteroid that big would explode into pieces on the way down, releasing as much energy as a 2.5-megaton atomic blast. Such a scenario took place in 1908 when a space rock blew up over the forests of Siberia, knocking down millions of trees over an 820-square-mile area, Yeomans said. That's not as big of a catastrophe as, say, the impact of a 6-mile-wide asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago — but if Siberia's "Tunguska Event" had occurred over a city, that city would have been wiped out.
Earth may have lucked out this time, but Yeomans noted that "there are lots of asteroids we are watching where we haven't yet ruled out an Earth impact." In 2011, NASA estimated that more than 90 percent of the near-Earth objects wider than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) have been identified and put on the tracking list. However, only about a third of the objects between a kilometer and 100 meters (330 feet) are being tracked. And NASA has detected only a small proportion of the estimated 1 million asteroids that are smaller than 100 meters but still capable of doing significant damage — asteroids like 2011 DA14.
"It's an effort that will take another decade or two," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program.
More about asteroids:
- What to do with a killer asteroid? Ideas wanted
- Sorry, Bruce: The asteroid would win in real 'Armageddon'
- Search for near-Earth asteroids needs a speed boost
- Cosmic Log archive on asteroids
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Last updated 10:30 p.m. ET Feb. 7.
Leave a Comment:
This asteroid is definitely not like any man made Space Shuttle in size or shape and speed.
I think that is the main reason NASA will be watching very seriously to see how this rock will truly act when it comes flying by.
They know how too predict the Shuttle, but this is no space craft folks.
Major Tom is not in control of this orbit or perhaps decent if one should ever occur.
The news media says that the Asteroid will be flying by at an altitude above the earth of 17,000 miles and a speed of 17,500 miles per hour. http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/07/16888433-asteroid-2012-da14-is-closing-in-for-a-close-encounter-and-a-swift-kick?lite Isn't the orbital velocity of 17,000 miles per hour going to mean we might capture this Asteroid in an earth orbit? Escape velocity is 25,000 miles per hour and this is going slower than that. (unless the report was wrong about its speed.
"They know how too predict the Shuttle, but this is no space craft folks."
We know its speed, direction, mass, and the influence of Earth and Lunar gravity. What that mass is, is irrelevant. Gravity and inertia don't care.
Still can't help it,This makes me excited,maybe I'm sick...but will be on high anxiety that day.lol.
Linda your way too funny to be sick, thank you for that comment it made my day....LOL
cheers
Thanks,that makes me feel that I'm okay after all.High alert is stimulating for the brain.[once in a while]
I heard that Obama used an executive order to make it go away.
I heard you were a freaking idiot.
This reminds me of the old George Carlin's bit of "The hippy dippy weatherman" When he said " There's a line of thunderstorms north of us and....the radar is also picking up a group of Russian ICBM missiles, sooooooooo I would not sweat the thunderstorms"
Please tell me the NASA people making the entry projections....
Are not the same people who made NASA budget projections .....
As Maxwell Smart would say... "Missed it by THAT much."
OK, maximum up-arrows to anyone who can invent a suitable asteroid drinking-game.
Hey - let's have some fun and shoot it with a Nuke as it flies by!!! POOF
oh no - it's raining baby Asteroids....
Hey Rock!!!!!! Mankind on this earth don't need your help on destroying this planet.
time to call Bruce Willis.
I swear The name of 2012 DA 14 scares me since it's 2013, I think people might have been right, "Darn you people" The timing was offf
It was discovered and named in 2012.
Earth's gravitational field will give it such a kick that we'll never have to worry about it again.
Don't believe every man.. George Washington
What a stupid and disgusting comment in this article, "huge asteroid"; the picture shows an asteroid large as a quarter of earth when if fact it later says it's "150 feet". Not exactly huge, would burn up in the atmosphere first.
Yes, the perspective is a little disorienting. The video was created from the perspective of a space traveler close behind the asteroid.
Well, I hope their calculations are correct. If not, someone's going to have a Very bad day!
Yes Us!!!!
The biggest threat this one probably poses is wiping out major satelites, which could be as devastating, overall, as a planetary impact
kardashians will try and make an episode of this: "The rock that almost messed up our hair or mirage"
marriage
Ugh... misinformation. And from a NASA rep... even worse. This guy really needs to get his facts straight. It's been generally accepted that the Tunguska event was cometary object, not an asteroid. Models and observations support it.
Actually, Yeomans and other experts have concluded that the profile of the Tunguska blast was most consistent with a stony asteroid that was destroyed in an airburst. You can read about it on pages 117-119 of Yeomans' recently published book, "Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us."
....I still like to believe it was Nikola Tesla....lol....hey, you never know.
@Alan - There are several other sources that contradict the stony-asteroid conclusion made by Yeoman et al., including a 3D numerical modelling of the impact done by Utyuzhnikov and Rudenko in 2008, the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the impact, and the TRINITY expedition in 2010 which used ground penetrating radar to examine the site (the analysis suggested the comet theory was correct as well).
I just got the sense that Yeoman was being a bit hyperdramatic in his choice of words and might be making suppositions without full acknowledgement of the data.
But, as in all science, there will be differences of opinion until better observations can be made.
Sure would be nice if it would take out the GOP and Teabaggers...then we could have a wonderful world again
Do you really think like that??? Anyone who opposes you, on any issue, should be killed??
Before you answer that, I voted for Obama, and I am a registered Democrat.
Perhaps , you've gone cultist on politics?????
Yeah...I'm sure all the Middle East strife would go away because of that.
Did you sleep through history classes? When did we ever have a 'wonderful world...?'
So Alan, thanks again for putting up a very interesting Space Story. Do you know it my Newsvine will continue to be valid on this site, as well as other NBC sites, after the 'change'?
Appreciate your work, Sir. It's always informative.
Peace
I got to say I am impressed! Not only a well written and interesting (at least to me) article. But to have a writer actually answering questions from the comments section.
Any chance there will be actual images of the fly by, aside from those radar images? I would love to get to see a real picture of it.
Too bad there are so many budget cuts that we couldn't have tried to land a transceiver on it to see if we could do it and then get a free ride with cameras and sensors on it to send info back to Earth. It wouldn't have to be expensive. Just durable enough to get there and still function at least for a year or two. And if it worked we could track it more closely for a while. It would be a good test to see if putting a device on that kind of object can be done and learn from trying.
It's not a budget issue. It's going by too fast, and discovered too late to prepare such a thing.
Even a deflection bomb (if one were needed) doesn't actually have to rendezvous with it to work, just explode at the right moment and position as it goes by.
That same strange series of coincidences that created life also keeps us safe from the millions of threats that should've ended it already.....yet, some believe there is no God? ....is this not enough proof of something more?????
Perhaps its the way people like you generally treat others who don't agree with you that turns them off to the notion. And no i don't mean all Christians or even all religious people, but i have seen plenty of your post. Generally you just attack people and call them names when they don't agree with you. Honestly acting like that will turn more people away from God then it will ever bring to him. I would suggest if you want to bring people to God, you either stop abusing anyone with a differing opinion, Or stop mentioning him.
@Michael.....really??? Being I rarely mention religion in these posts and don't simply attack anyone without supported facts.....I think you may be a confused....
As an atheist, I can comment on this, I suppose. Yes, I would need more proof. Our planet is an unlikely set of circumstances that allows it to support life and have a thriving ecosystem, that's true. But that doesn't mean we're the only planet out there that falls into these circumstances. So much of our galaxy and universe haven't been even glimpsed at to know for sure if our planet is the only one. I just don't see our planet having natural defenses as God.
Well, two big problems with that, Hope.
First, think of the puddle, sitting there in the pothole in the road, thinking to itself "isn't it funny that this pothole was just exactly the right shape for me?!" Well, we're the puddle, and the universe is our pothole.
Second, even if we did assume that this or that coincidence is too astounding to be coincidence, what does it prove? I could just as easily argue that it proves that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world.
@Ron....There are so many impossible probabilities that all had to come together to support life, that statistically, it is hard to state there isn't something more....even if it is the Flying Spaghetti Monster. However, being "God" is just a name we assign to the "something more"......I suppose the Flying Spaghetti Monster would be "God" if it did indeed create the world...
There's nothing coincidental about life, and we're not completely safe from the nastiness the Universe can bring our way.
If nothing else, the sun itself will go red giant in a billion years or so, rendering Earth sterile at best, possibly destroyed completely. Barring human intervention, that's a given.
Whew, another so called near miss. Wonder if the scientists say the same with the mega asteroid that will end it all only because they can't prevent what is inevitable. Stay tuned, it won't be long before one of the countless apocalypse giants ends our existence
If we sit and wait for it, yes. If we both get our species eggs out of one basket by colonizing other worlds, and (of necessity to accomplish the former), we develop our spaceflight technology to the point that early locating and deflecting even large objects is far more practical, then of all the ways the Universe can kill us, that one will be gone.
I thought, gravity, would pull the rock even closer, not push it away. So, does the Earth have gravity, or does the Earth suck?
my guess would be the fact that it is flying by so fast the gravity only has a tug on its path rather then sucking it in. Kinda like how the moon does not manage to get sucked in but is in fact drifting away.
The Asteroid has an orbit that takes it closer to the Sun, just past Venus, and then rises to just beyond the orbit of the Earth. As it climes away from the sun it losses speed and as it heads closer to the sun it picks up speed. Right now it is still in the climbing stage and is actually traveling around the sun slower than the earth, at this point, so the Earth is overtaking it. Plus the Earths gravity is pulling at it right now and has been since it came within 3 million miles. (our moon is orbiting at 283,000 miles and our orbital speed around the sun is 44,000 Miles per hour) Since the earth is traveling faster at this point, the earth would give up a little of it's speed while it it pulled on the Asteroid accelerating it IF the Asteroid was behind us, but, it is ahead of us.
Imagine a bowling alley with a big lane and a large hole in the middle. Throw the ball just right and it will spiral into the hole just like the water in a flushed toilet. Miss just a little and it will dip in and come back out in a different direction.