The 2012DA14 asteroid gets close to the Earth.

The heavenly body named 2012DA14, whose weight is 130.000 tons and an equivalent length to a football stadium, will approach Earth this evening (GMT+1), specifically 27.860 km above us, 8.050 under hundreds of artificial satellite dishes. NASA has discarded the possibility of the asteroid impacting the Earth. However, the space agency has worked out that was it to crash into our planet’s atmosphere, it would explode at 2,5 megatons— 157 times more energy than the atomic bomb released in Hiroshima (Japan) in 1945.

2012DA14 was discovered at the Astronomic Observatory in Majorca last year. The asteroid will be closer to us this evening at 8.26 p.m. (GMT+1) and we will be able to observe it since 8.57 (GMT+1).

The Russian meteor

2012DA14 has no relation to the collision recorded this morning in Russia, according to Fernando Ballesteros, member of the Astronomic Observatory of the University of Valencia, who claims this is happening on the same day by chance.

© Mètode 2013.