Small asteroid will zip between Earth and moon tonight

A 30-foot-wide asteroid discovered just last night will sail past Earth just before midnight ET, NASA reports. Traveling about 18,163 mph, the space rock will pass within 216,000 miles, slightly closer than the orbit of the moon.

Good thing.

"If it's typical density, it would create a 4 kiloton explosion in the Earth's atmosphere if it were to hit, which of course it won't," Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL, tells Space.com. "You'd expect an object of this size to fly within the orbit of the moon every few days or so."


[link to blogs.usatoday.com]