Earth has near miss with two asteroids

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Nasa has revealed that two asteroids passed within the moon and our planet's orbit on Wednesday.


Both objects were identified at the weekend by the Nasa-funded Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson in the US state of Arizona.

The first asteroid, dubbed 2010 RX30, was about 65 feet in diameter and flew past at a distance of 154,000 miles at 9.51am.

The second, called 2010 RF12, was roughly two-thirds the size of its companion and was estimated to pass within 49,088 miles of Earth a few hours later.

Neither posed a risk to the planet, but scientists said it was rare to witness two such objects coming so close to Earth within such a short space of time.

"This is the first time we've seen (two) combined within a 24-hour period but that's probably because we don't know everything that is out there," said Lindley Johnson, executive of the Near-Earth Object programme at Nasa's headquarters in Washington, according to the Daily Telegraph.

In July, Nasa experts gave details of an asteroid measuring more than 600 yards in diameter that has a one-in-a-thousand chance of colliding with Earth in 2182.

Such a collision would create more damage than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.