Asteroid Passes Earth as UN Mulls Monitoring Network
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An asteroid half the size of a U.S. football field passed within an astronomical hair’s breadth of Earth today in the closest such encounter in a century.
The asteroid, called 2012 DA14, came within 17,200 miles (27,350 kilometers) of Earth at 2:25 p.m. Washington time, over Indonesia. Telescope images from western Australia, broadcast on NASA Television, showed the asteroid as a white speck against the blackness of space.