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Huge 'God of Chaos' Asteroid to Pass Near Earth in 2029

posted by martyb on Monday May 06 2019, @04:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the planning-ahead dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A 1,110-foot-wide asteroid named for the Egyptian god of chaos (and possibly a Stargate SG-1 character) will fly past Earth in 2029 within the distance of some orbiting spacecraft, according to reports.

The asteroid, 99942 Apophis, will come within 19,000 miles of Earth on April 13, a decade from now, but scientists at the Planetary Defense Conference are already preparing for the encounter, Newsweek reported. They plan to discuss the asteroid's effects on Earth's gravity, potential research opportunities and even how to deflect an incoming asteroid in a theoretical scenario.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/1110-foot-asteroid-to-pass-near-earth-in-2029

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @05:07AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @05:07AM (#839511)

    For reference, the moon is ~250k miles from earth. So this is about 10x closer than the moon.

    High earth orbit is ~1k miles from earth, which is about 20x closer than this object is supposed to approach.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @05:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @05:09AM (#839512)

    Nm, I misread the wikipedia page. High earth orbit is over 22k miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_orbit [wikipedia.org]

    So this thing is coming closer than some satellites,

  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday May 07 2019, @03:29AM

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday May 07 2019, @03:29AM (#839986) Homepage

    Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @03:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @03:56AM (#839997)

    No you idiot. 10 times closer would be 9 times out the other side, and about 2,250,000 miles away.
    It would be one tenth as far as the moon.