Close Call For Planet Earth!
Updated : Mar 6, 2009
It was near the end for us all early on Monday when a gigantic Asteroid passed earth and it was a close as they come! The mega rock, which was named by NASA as DD45, was around 800 square miles in diameter and was only 45,000 miles away from our planet when it whizzed by. Now fair enough, we say 45,000 miles... that's a huge amount but in space terms, it was very close!
Believe it or not, the satellites that surround our earth are about 22,000 miles away from us so the asteroid was only twice as far as one of the average telecommunications satellites. Astronomer Timothy Sphar of the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for Astrophysics said: â€This one was pretty damn close."
Wonder if we could tax the mega rocks and then they would be sure to stay away from Ireland!
VeryHappyPig says that would have been a very bad Monday morning!