Stranger in the night: space rock to make close Earth flyby

A little-known asteroid will skim past Earth on 15 February, passing just 28 000 km from our planet. The 50 m-diameter chunk of space rock was discovered in last year by ESA-sponsored amateur astronomers in Spain. Details of the ancient asteroid, 2012 DA14, are sketchy - no direct measurements of its size are available. From its brightness, scientists estimate its diameter at 50-80 m. Its composition is unknown and its mass is thought to be of the order of 130 000 tonnes. What is known is that it will not impact Earth anytime soon. "Its orbit can be computed quite accurately using Europe's NEODyS asteroid database," says Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-Earth objects at ESA's Space Situational Awareness office. "These computations show that a collision with Earth can be excluded quite safely at least for this century." On 15 February, the asteroid will make its closest pass to our planet this century when it flies by at 7.8 km/s at a distance of just within 28 000 km.