“No,” says Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA’s Near Earth Objects
office. Asteroid DA14 is half the size of a football field, and
will approach Earth on February 15, 2013. An asteroid of that
size hit Russia in 1908, and exploded–leveling trees of 820
square miles. Twenty years ago, NASA wouldn’t have been able to
detect such an object, but they have been monitoring it for many
years and are very sure that it will slip past the Earth’s
orbit, including the satellites. Asteroid DA14 is the first
object to approach Earth at such a close distance. People in
Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia, will be able to see the
asteroid through binoculars moving a full degree in the sky, and
will look almost twice the size of the moon. Image provided by:
solarsystem.nasa.gov