Asteroid set to whizz by Earth much too close for comfort
On October 12, an asteroid is going to come very, very close to Earth.
The European Space Agency says that the asteroid known as 2012 TC4 is 30-100 feet in size and will come around 27 thousand miles away from Earth.
That is one-eighth of the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Scientists say that an asteroid of this size, were it to enter Earth’s atmosphere, would have a similar effect to the Chelyabinsk event that occurred in 2013.
The small space rock gives NASA a chance to test its new “planetary defense system” with one scientist saying the near miss allows them to collect data and learn as much as possible.
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