NASA: Recently spotted asteroid no risk for Earth

By: 10 years ago

Screengrab from https://www.nasa.gov/

WASHINGTON — NASA says a newly spotted 1,300-foot (400-meter) wide asteroid is not a threat to hit Earth, despite recent media reports.

NASA’s Near Earth Object program manager Donald Yeomans said the asteroid, discovered in October by Russian scientists, won’t even get that close to Earth in the next 150 years. And it isn’t a threat to any other planet, either.

Calculations by NASA and Harvard say the closest asteroid 2014 UR116, will get to Earth is about 2.7 million miles in April 2047. Yeomans said that is so far away that it doesn’t make NASA’s running list of risky near-Earth objects.

Yeomans said in-depth analysis confirmed that that the space rock would not near Earth soon.