A small asteroid will buzz the Earth Saturday, flying just inside the orbit of the moon. It should fly safely by our home planet, according to a crack team of NASA space rock trackers.
The space rock, called Asteroid 2009 TM8, will fly within 216,000 miles (348,000 km) of Earth when it zooms by at a speed of about 18,163 mph (29,232 kph).
"That's slightly closer than the orbit of our moon," NASA's Asteroid Watch team said Friday via Twitter.
The Asteroid Watch team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., stands on constant watch for rogue space rocks that could pose an impact risk to Earth. It was that team which, last week, scaled back the risk of another asteroid – a large space rock called Apophis – hitting the Earth in 2036.
Compared to Apophis, which is as large as two football fields, 2009 TM8 is tiny. It is about 30 feet (7 meters) across and was discovered Thursday by skywatchers, JPL officials told SPACE.com.
Such close pass are not unheard of. With smaller objects, which are hard to find, announcements like this often come at the last minute. Researchers say there is a risk, however, of Earth eventually being hit by an undetected small asteroid that could cause heavy localized or even regional damage.
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