[meteorite-list] Asteroid 2010 GA6 to Fly by Within Moon's Orbit on April 8

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 2010 15:36:11 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201004072236.o37MaBl4024923_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-115

Asteroid to Fly by Within Moon's Orbit Thursday
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
April 06, 2010

A newly discovered asteroid, 2010 GA6, will safely fly by Earth this
Thursday at 4:06 p.m. Pacific (23:06 U.T.C.). At time of closest
approach 2010 GA6 will be about 359,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away
from Earth - about 9/10ths the distance to the moon. The asteroid,
approximately 22 meters (71 feet) wide, was discovered by the Catalina
Sky Survey, Tucson, Az.

"Fly bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few
weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth
using both ground and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object
Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these
objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their orbits to
determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,
operates the Arecibo Observatory under a cooperative agreement with the
National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va.

For more information about asteroids and near-Earth objects, visit:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle at jpl.nasa.gov

2010-115
Received on Wed 07 Apr 2010 06:36:11 PM PDT