A 150-Foot Asteroid's Near-Brush with Earth

By Chris Gayomali

On February 15, an asteroid about half the size of a football field will come awfully close to Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA 14, which is 150 feet in diameter, was discovered about a year ago, and will zoom by our planet about 17,200 miles above the Indian Ocean — or closer than most weather and communications satellites. Check out NASA's rendition below.

The space agency says the flyby is "the closest ever predicted Earth approach for an object this large." While it won't hit our planet this time around, there's a small chance it could collide with Earth when it circles back in 2110. Dina Spector at Business Insider points out that if an asteroid this size did hit Earth, it'd "be similar to the Tunguska asteroid, which hit Siberia in 1908."