[meteorite-list] Small Asteroid Will Pass Earth Safely on March 6 (2014 EC)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2014 11:17:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201403061917.s26JHMds029914_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-072

Small Asteroid Will Pass Earth Safely on Thursday
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
March 06, 2014

An asteroid about 25 feet (8 meters) across will safely pass Earth at
about 1:21 p.m. PST (4:21 p.m. EST) today, March 6, approaching us six
times closer than the moon.

This distance, though not unusual, is closer than the Earth flyby of a
larger asteroid on Wednesday afternoon, March 5.

This afternoon's flyby object, asteroid 2014 EC, was discovered on March
5 by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz. Its closest-approach
distance, about 38,300 miles (61,600 kilometers), is between four and
five Earth-diameters away from our home planet. It will not be visible
to the unaided eye.

"This is not an unusual event," said Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in
the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Objects of this size pass this close to
the Earth several times every year."

A larger asteroid's flyby on Wednesday afternoon came within about
nine-tenths of the distance to the moon. That asteroid, named 2014
DX110, is about 100 feet (30 meters) across. A third asteroid, 2014 EF,
which is closer in size to today's 2014 EC, passed Earth at about 7 p.m.
PST (10 p.m. EST) Wednesday, with closest approach about twice as far
from Earth as 2014 EC's closest approach.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets using both
ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations
Program, for which the asteroid-watching portion is commonly called
"Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them
and identifies their close approaches 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.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch.

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

2014-072
Received on Thu 06 Mar 2014 02:17:22 PM PST