An asteroid barely missed the Earth at 5:51 a.m. on Wednesday. Space watches say another asteroid is going to make a close encounter with Earth at 5:12 p.m. on Wednesday. According to NASA, this is a good reason why we should closely monitor the space around the planet.
Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near Earth Program, says that the objects do not pose a threat to Earth and they are not visible to the naked eye.
CNN Reports,
Roughly 50 million objects pass through near-Earth space each day, Yeomans said. But what makes this situation noteworthy is that these two asteroids are passing so close to Earth on the same day and that NASA spotted them so far in advance.
"Things like this happen every day that we simply don't know about because we don't have the telescopes large enough to find them or surveys that are looking full-time," he said. "This demonstrates the system's working on some level, but we need larger telescopes and more of them to find objects that are coming this close."
Wednesday morning, asteroid 2010 RX30, estimated to be 32 to 65 feet in diameter, passed within 154,000 miles of Earth at 5:51 a.m., according to PopFi.com.
Asteroid 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet in diameter, will pass within 49,088 miles of Earth at 5:12 p.m.
