Near Miss or Look out Below!

The "things movies are made of" happened at 1:14PM this afternoon. A small asteroid named 2011 MD whizzed by the earth a mere 7,500 miles above the coast of Antarctica, 2,000 miles south by southwest of South Africa . That would put it beneath some of our geosynchronous satellites which orbit 22,236 miles high. 2011 MD was only discovered last Wednesday (June 22) by LINEAR, a pair of robotic telescopes in New Mexico that scan the skies for near-Earth asteroids. The best estimates suggest that this asteroid is between 29 to 98 feet wide, about the size of a tour bus. This makes it too small to survive the plunge through our atmosphere. Also there is little chance that the rock would hit one of the our satellites. They are too few and too far apart. Objects this large usually fly by the earth every 6 years but not all of them are discovered. On Feb 4, 2011, asteroid 2011 CQ1 came within 3,500 miles of us. Rocks that zoom by this close are jettisoned back out into space as shown in the picture provided by Space.com. Scientist frequently use this doglegged shift in trajectory when propelling satellites through space. The acceleration caused by it means less fuel consumption by the satellite.