Asteroid the size of a delivery truck to zip by earth in ‘extraordinarily close approach’
An asteroid the size of a delivery truck is set to whip past earth in one of the close st such encounters ever recorded. NASA insists it will be a near miss on Friday, with no chance of the asteroid hitting earth. The US space agency said the newly discovered asteroid will zoom 3600km above the southern tip of South America, with its closest approach to occur at 11.27am AEDT on Friday. Watch the latest News on Channel 7 or stream for free on 7plus >> The asteroid’s proximity at that time will be 10 times closer than the bevy of communication satellites circling overhead. Even if the space rock came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites. NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An asteroid will come closer to earth than the orbit of geosynchronous s...