'No Earth impact is possible' for asteroid Asteroid thought to
be 45 meters long Don't consider this a count-down to doomsday,
but on Feb. 15 an asteroid is going to come pretty close to
Earth. And this is only one of thousands of objects that are
destined to one day enter our neighborhood in space. "There are
lots of asteroids that we're watching that we haven't yet ruled
out an Earth impact, but all of them have an impact probability
that is very, very low," Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth
Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said
at a press briefing. This particular asteroid is called 2012
DA14. NASA scientists reiterated Thursday that people have
nothing to worry about. "No Earth impact is possible," Yeomans
said. The asteroid is thought to be 45 meters -- about half a
football field -- long. It will come no closer than 17,100 miles
from our planet's surface. An object the size of 2012 DA14
appears to hit Earth about once every 1,200 years, Yeomans said.
"There really hasn't b