While searching for a topic I came across something that I found to be interesting that is set to happen this week on November 8, 2011. On NPR I read that a quarter-mile wide asteroid was scheduled to come between the earth and the moon at around 6:28 pm EST. According to this article the scientists of NASA are 100 percent confident that we have nothing to worry about when it comes to getting hit with this “aircraft sized” asteroid; it’s said that the last time this specific asteroid, 2005 YU55, has came into “shouting distance” was about 200 years ago. What is so interesting about this particular asteroid is we’ve been tracking it since scientists discovered it back in 2005. Unlike most asteroids that are basically just “whirling rocks” in space, the YU55 is one that contains water and carbon-based material that is thought to have “planted the seed for life” here on earth; this is classified as a C-type asteroid. Something like this can help astronomers further develop and support the theory that I have just previously stated Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA’s near earth program, says. Studies show that there are always small objects that come close to the earth but nothing of this magnitude will have came this close since 1976. It’s expected that this particular asteroid will come within 202,000 miles from the earth, which is closer then the estimated 240,000 miles we are from the moon. What I find to be interesting is that astronomers have predicted the next time an object of this magnitude will come this close again to the earth is in the year 2029 and are confident that we will not get struck by it, but with that said in the spring of 2036 we will have yet another space object of this magnitude come close and they think that there could be a remote chance it could hit the earth. Due to these more recent discoveries President Barrack Obama has ceased progress on the 30-year space shuttle program, so NASA would have enough money to get the ball rolling, and have astronauts focus on getting to these asteroids and then to Mars in the coming decades.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=142029144
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