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Early Monday morning, while people on the East Coast were making coffee, dropping kids off at school, and cursing in traffic, a space rock as big as a 10-story building slipped past Earth.
The asteroid, dubbed 2017 AG13, was discovered on Saturday by the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, according to an email from Slooh, a company that broadcasts live views of space.
It's between 50 and 111 feet (15 to 34 meters) long, and when it swung by Earth, 2017 AG13 was moving at 9.9 miles per second (16 kilometers per second). The near-Earth object, or NEO, came within about half the distance between the moon and Earth, according to Slooh.
"This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us," Eric Edelman, an astronomer with Slooh, said during a live broadcast of the flyby at 7:47 a.m. ET on January 9. "It actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth."
Read more here. (Business Insider)
The asteroid, dubbed 2017 AG13, was discovered on Saturday by the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, according to an email from Slooh, a company that broadcasts live views of space.
It's between 50 and 111 feet (15 to 34 meters) long, and when it swung by Earth, 2017 AG13 was moving at 9.9 miles per second (16 kilometers per second). The near-Earth object, or NEO, came within about half the distance between the moon and Earth, according to Slooh.
"This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us," Eric Edelman, an astronomer with Slooh, said during a live broadcast of the flyby at 7:47 a.m. ET on January 9. "It actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth."
Read more here. (Business Insider)
