This NASA diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The people of Earth are not doing enough to protect their home planet from the threat of an asteroid impact, scientists said today (Feb. 5) as they track a space rock slated to make a close shave next week.
The asteroid due to pass exceptionally close to Earth on Feb. 15 — called 2012 DA14 — was discovered only last year by amateur astronomers with the help of a grant from a non-profit agency. While asteroid 2012 DA14 poses no risk of hitting Earth, there are likely hundreds of thousands more rocks like it out there, its discoverers said.
"We live in a cosmic shooting gallery and it's a reminder that we need to keep doing our work to find these things and to prevent the only preventable natural disaster, which is asteroid impact," said Bruce Betts, a planetary scientist at the Planetary Society, the non-profit space research and exploration organization that helped sponsor the discovery of asteroid 2012 DA14.
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