An asteroid the size of a house will shoot by the earth on October 12, though without posing a threat to the planet, astronomers said on Thursday. The space rock dubbed TC4 will zoom by at a distance of about 44,000 km, outside the 36,000-km orbit of geostationary satellites but inside the moon’s orbit, the European Space Agency said, according to AFP.
“We know for sure that there is no possibility for this object to hit the Earth,” said Detlef Koschny of ESA’s “Near Earth Objects” research team. “There is no danger whatsoever.”
The asteroid, which is about 15 m to 30 m long, first went past the Earth in October 2012, though it was at nearly double the distance then. Scientists had expected it to flit past the planet again this year, but did not know at what distance. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile managed to locate the rock and determine its distance.
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