Everything you need to know for Friday's big asteroid flyby
Hours from now, Asteroid 2012 DA14 will make history when it becomes the biggest object ever witnessed getting this close to the Earth.
by Charles Cooper
February 14, 2013 12:41 PM PST
... For weeks, scientists have been tracking the path of the small near-Earth asteroid known as 2012 DA14, which is on course to swing by the Earth on Friday at 2:24 p.m. EST/11:24 a.m. PST.
... If a space rock of this magnitude crashed into us, scientists say that it would release about 2.5 megatons of energy in the atmosphere. The last time an asteroid this size smacked into the Earth was in 1908 in Tuguska, Siberia. That rock, which actually was a bit smaller than 2012 DA14, took out about 750 square miles of forest near what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia.
... 2012 DA14 will pass inside the band of weather and communications satellites which orbit the earth, some 22,200 miles above the planet's surface. At its closest point, the flyby will get as close as 17,150 miles above the Earth and constitute the closest approach for a known object of this size ...
NASA will offer a streamed view of the asteroid flyby starting at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. Other outfits offering views of the asteroid throughout the day include Israel's Bareket Observatory, the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, the Clay Center Observatory in Massachusetts and and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama ...
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57569434-76/everything-you-need-to-know-to-watch-fridays-big-asteroid-flyby/
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