Asteroid misses earth by 41,000 miles
In space, 41,000 miles is nearby. Very nearby.
The object with the not-very-memorable name of 2009 DD45 came that close to hitting the earth and causing some very memorable damage. Discovered only days ago, the asteroid is 65 to 164 feet across and was traveling at 12 miles per second at its closest approach to our planet.
Could we be destroyed by an object from space, as the dinosaurs were? Maybe not, but some scientists think an asteroid could destroy cities. The odds of such a disastrous event are not large…but they aren’t vanishingly small either.
Some, like former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikert have been promoting the idea of building a defense system for our planet—to protect us from renegade objects from space. (Schweikert helped found the b612foundation, to find a way to deflect such objects.) It’s either crazy or very sensible…depending on what the future brings.
