Bus-Sized Asteroid Makes Close Pass by Earth

From Blaze.com (May 5):

A bus-sized asteroid passed by the Earth at a distance closer than the moon Saturday — but the more disconcerting part is how little warning astronomers had of the event.

Scientists learned of the 25-foot asteroid named 2014 HL129 just three days before it came within 186,000 miles of Earth.

The asteroid was spotted by astronomers with the Mt. Lemmon Survey, located in the Catalina Mountains of Arizona.

Though Saturday’s event was only a close shave, incidents like the 65-foot-wide meteor that crashed in Russia in February 2013 — which went undetected until it was too late — are why NASA and other government space agencies around the world are working to better predict these giant space rocks that can have catastrophic consequences. [read more]

Darn, that dark matter! See my April 30 article if you don’t know what I am talking about.

I hope NASA can find time in their Muslim outreach program to better predict asteroids and other flying objects in space. You know to do actual space science.