IT’S COMING RIGHT FOR THEM!

Asteroid 2012 DA14 will make a record-breaking trip near Earth on February 15th. It will fly below the orbits of the geosynchronous satellites and be at an altitude of 17,200 miles; our satellites are closer to 22,000 miles.

The object is 45 meters in diameter and is estimated to weigh 130,000 metric tons. Its speed will be about 8 km/s (17,500 m.p.h.). There is no concern from Sky Watchers, though. "There's no danger to the planet at all," Lindley Johnson of NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program in Washington told VOA. "We know the orbit quite well now."

Most objects that size are small enough to break up in our atmosphere and avoid a global cataclysm. Although it’s of little consolation to the area affected, the impact sight would have the equivalent damage as a 3-megaton nuclear weapon being detonated. There are some clever impact simulators out there:

http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/
(data tables only)

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
(data tables only)

http://simulator.down2earth.eu/
(place impact site on your own house via Google maps)

At its closest, 2/15/2013, 19:24 UTC (1:24PM Chicago time), it will be visible in the southern hemisphere (Austrialia, South Africa, etc.) only as a faint point of light, but will be visible with binoculars. The next flyby of this asteroid will be in 2046.

NASA keeps close watch on this and other Near Earth Objects (NEO’s). This link will let you keep an eye out for them as well.