NASA to Chronicle Close Earth Flyby of Asteroid today ( 02/15/2013 )

Tweet

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130201315144.html I find this all very fascinating.. "NASA Television will provide commentary starting at 11 a.m. during the close, but safe, flyby of a small near-Earth asteroid named 2012 DA14. NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids and protecting our home planet from them. This flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close. The half-hour broadcast from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will incorporate real-time animation to show the location of the asteroid in relation to Earth, along with live or near real-time views of the asteroid from observatories in Australia, weather permitting. At the time of its closest approach to Earth at approximately 11:25 a.m. PST (2:25 p.m. EST / 19:25 UTC), the asteroid will be about 17,150 miles (27,600 kilometers) above Earth's surface. The commentary will be available via NASA TV and streamed live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 In addition to the commentary, near real-time imagery of the asteroid's flyby before and after closest approach, made available to NASA by astronomers in Australia and Europe, weather permitting, will be streamed beginning at about 9 a.m. PST (noon EST) and continuing through the afternoon at the following website: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 " This asteroid is roughly the size of half a football field, or a twelve story building. There's a huge crater in Arizona where another large asteroid fell and an asteroid flying close to the earth, called the Tunguska event was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near (and later struck) the Tunguska River in Russia, in 1908. The explosion, having the epicenter is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 3–6 mi (5–10 kilometres) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded widely varying estimates of the object's size, but it is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history. Although the meteoroid or comet appears to have burst in the air rather than hitting the surface, this event still is referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT with 10–15 megatons of TNT the most likely—roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954; about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan; and about two-fifths the power of the later Soviet Union's own Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated. The Tunguska explosion knocked an estimated 80 million trees down over an area covering 830 sq mi (2,150 square kilometres). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies. How about that!? Do you think it's a good idea to study this along with possible "deflection strategies"?