A small asteroid is currently making its way towards the Earth and although NASA claims that there is almost no chance that it will make an impact, predictions regarding the distance of the flyby are still uncertain - it could pass as close as 17,000 kilometers, which is about half of the altitude that our geosynchronous satellites orbit, or as far as 14.5 million kilometers, according to National Geographic.
"The variation in possible closest-approach distances is due to the wide range of possible trajectories for this object, since it was tracked for only a short time after discovery," NASA officials said in a statement.
The asteroid, named 2013 TX68, will make its close encounter with Earth on March 5 and - despite its small size on an asteroid scale - it is still fairly big by human standards, approximately half the size of a basketball court, Discovery reports.
"The possibilities of collision on any of the three future flyby dates are far too small to be of any real concern," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS). "I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more."
Although worries are low in regards to 2013 TX68, fears regarding asteroid collisions in general have been rising lately, so much so that Russian scientists are planning to use their intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to target Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) including asteroid 99942 Apophis, which is believed will pass by the Earth at a dangerously close range in 2036, according to Digital Trends. NASA also recently formalized a program called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which is specifically designed to detect and analyze NEOs that come into the Earth's orbit, as previously reported by HNGN.
The most recent evidence of NEOs posing a danger to Earth was back in 2013 when a meteor exploded in the sky above Russia, leading to the injury of more than 1,000 people, according to The Telegraph.
