Small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 is generating a lot of buzz,
and no wonder. On February 15, 2013, it’ll pass very close to
Earth – within 17,200 miles (about 28,000 kilometers). It’ll
pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and
communications satellites. NASA has done a good job, in our
opinion, getting information out to the public about this object
and its 2013 passage. A couple of recent videos can be seen
below. The first is narrated by Dr. Donald Yeomans of NASA’s Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He is a senior
research scientist and manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object
Program Office and so is uniquely qualified to speak about past,
present and future passages of near-Earth asteroids. The second
video, also from NASA, is an animation depicting the trajectory
of asteroid 2012 DA14 as it travels within the Earth-moon system
on February 15. It’s as if you’re traveling along with the
asteroid. It looks scary at first, but then you see … it doesn’t
hit us. The final video shown he