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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 04 2017, @02:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the Where-is-the-Earth-shattering-kaboom? dept.

CNET reports that two asteroids, 2017 FU102 and 2017 FT102, passed the Earth on 2 April and 3 April.

According to EarthSky,

The near-Earth asteroid 2017 FU102 was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on 29 March 2017. Today (April 2, 2017), it will have a very close, but safe encounter with the Earth (about 0.6 times the mean distance of the moon).

[...] this ~10 meters large rock will reach its minimum distance from us of 143,000 miles (230,000 km).

The other object, 2017 FT102, is smaller and its approach to the Earth was at a greater distance. It was also discovered on 29 March.

[By comparison, the Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to be 20 meters in diameter. --Ed.]

Further information:
2017 FU102 at IAU Minor Planet Center
2017 FT102 at IAU Minor Planet Center

Related stories:
Days After its Discovery, Asteroid Buzzes Earth
Platinum Asteroid Worth Trillions Of Dollars Flies Past Earth
Watch Jumbo Asteroid Zip Past Earth
Close Asteroid Pass this Weekend
Surprise Flyby of Asteroid on January 9, 2017
NASA's Mission to (Potentially Devastating) Asteroid Bennu


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:30PM (3 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:30PM (#488801)

    While the odds are low, if it's going to hit in a major metro area, good luck evacuating it in time. The odds aren't zero either: the Chelyabinsk meteor hit that city, not some rural place many miles away. Luckily for them, it exploded 20-30km above the ground, or it could have been far, far worse. Which then brings up the question: is it better to know, or to just let it happen? If they had known that city was going to be hit, they probably would have evacuated. Would more people have been hurt or killed in the chaos of a short-notice evacuation? Quite likely. As it was, ~1100 people got hurt, mainly from broken glass, and one woman broke her spine.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:30PM (#488869) Journal

    While the odds are low, if it's going to hit in a major metro area, good luck evacuating it in time.

    Depends on the location. Developed world could evacuation a huge area (the size of hurricane evacuation notices) given three days warning. But a week should be good for most parts of the world. It of course depends on how accurate the predictions are and whether the object breaks up prior to impact.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:54AM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:54AM (#488949)

      Yeah, depends on the location and also the accuracy and the amount of warning time.

      And what if you implement such a system, and have several evacuations and it turns out you're wrong, or the impact is hundreds of miles away, or it explodes in the upper atmosphere causing no damage? After a few incidents like this, then people won't follow the evacuations any more ("boy who cried wolf" syndrome). The only sensible way to handle this is to redirect the asteroids before they become impactors. And over time, the program can pay for itself: some of the asteroids will likely have valuable ores that can be extracted.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:08AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:08AM (#489031) Journal
        While some objects, comets and icy asteroids are hard to predict (they're generating more or less random thrust), most bodies that threaten a collision with Earth have very predictable orbits. It's not like predicting weather or flu seasons where the predictions can be way off even a short ways into the future due to dynamics and unknowns that the modelers can't account for.