Asteroid 2005 YU55 To Narrowly Miss Earth

NASA

 November 07, 2011 6:10 am

Though a quarter-mile-wide asteroid will make it way extremely close to Earth tomorrow, it's too early to get ready for Armaggeddon. Since 1976 not any other celestial bodies reached Earth so close. Tomorrow at at 6:28 p.m. EST it will pass about 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) away and the scientists say there is no need to panic.

"There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon," Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program office, told Reuters (via Huffingtonpost.)
 
But what if the asteroid, which got name 2005 YU55 hits our planet? A professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University told AP that the asteroid would create a four-mile wide crater 1,700 feet deep. It could cause 70-foot tsunami waves and shake the ground like a magnitude-7 earthquake.
 
It is really important to world's space science to investigate the asteroid. "These objects are important for science ... they're potential resources for raw materials in space that we may wish to take advantage of some day," Don Yeomans, the manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program office, told Huffingtonpost.

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By Manana

Categories: World