] As far as flying space rocks go, it's as close an ] encounter as mankind has ever had. ] ] A 100-foot diameter asteroid will pass within 26,500 ] miles of Earth on Thursday evening, the closest-ever ] brush on record by a space rock, NASA astronomers said. ] ] The asteroid's close flyby, first spied late Monday, ] poses no risk, NASA astronomers stressed. ] ] "It's a guaranteed miss," astronomer Paul Chodas, of the ] near-Earth object office at NASA's Jet Propulsion ] Laboratory, said Wednesday. Hopefully now people will wake up and realize more money needs to be spent on searching and indexing the orbits of Near Earth Objects (NEO's). -LB CNN.com - NASA: 100-foot asteroid to fly by Earth - Mar 18, 2004 |