(Courtesy NASA, Daily Press ) An asteroid half the size of a
football field is set to buzz Earth on Friday, careening much
closer to us than the moon. Closer than some communication and
weather satellites. Not to worry, experts say. "There's no
possibility of hitting the Earth," said Dan Mazanek, Near-Earth
Object (NEO) technical lead at NASA Langley Research Center in
Hampton. In fact, said Mazanek, the gravity of our planet will
"sling-shot" the asteroid into a different orbit, likely
altering it enough to remove any threat to us in future, too.
And that, says NASA, will leave only about 499,999 other
asteroids of similar size out there in our solar system. That we
know of. Scientists believe that for every such asteroid we know
about, 99 others are yet to be discovered. "We live in a cosmic
shooting gallery in our solar system," Mazanek said. "You can
look up at the moon any time of night and see how pock-marked it
is. And if (our planet) didn't have erosion, water and wind,
we'd see the history of impacts