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An asteroid with the potential to harm thousands of Earthlings was detected just two days before it passed by Earth:
A smallish asteroid zoomed past Earth this morning (Jan. 9), just two days after scientists first spotted the space rock. The asteroid, known as 2017 AG13, flew by our planet at just half the distance from Earth to the moon today at 7:47 a.m. EST (1247 GMT). (On average, the moon lies about 239,000 miles, or 385,000 kilometers, from Earth.) You can learn more about today's flyby in this video of asteroid 2017 AG13 from Slooh.com, which includes details on the space rock from Slooh Community Observatory astronomer Eric Edelman.
2017 AG13 is thought to be between 36 and 111 feet (11 to 34 meters) wide, according to astronomers at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For perspective, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring more than 1,000 people, was thought to be about 65 feet (20 m) wide.
See also: NASA Formalizes Planetary Defense Coordination Office to Track Asteroids
NASA and FEMA Conduct Asteroid Threat Response Exercise
NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Weasley on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:47AM
It's getting better as time goes on. We're discovering ever smaller and smaller asteroids as time goes on. We could be doing more though. Last time I was still paying attention to the minor planet scene (about 5 or 6 years ago) everyone was saying the two telescope projects LSST and Pan-Starrs were going to go a long way to finding these much smaller objects. LSST is still under construction I believe and Pan-Starrs has been having funding issues after only getting one of it's four telescopes operational.