Earth's "Second Moon" Gets Close, Briefly

angkor writes with a snippet from MSNBC: "An asteroid that behaves something like a second moon to Earth will make its closest approach to our planet next week before shuttling back into deep space for nearly a century."

First...

[Cyno01]

"Thats no moon, Its a battle Station" Post!

Who cares?

[Tuxinatorium]

It's just a 200-foot wide asteroid that the earth-moon system happened to capture. Even if it did hit earth it wouldn't do any serious harm.

Re:Who cares?

[Twilight1]

Well, you would probably care if it happened to hit in your back yard...

...but not for long. ;)

- Twilight1

Re:Who cares?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

"...but not for long. ;)" That depends on the existance of an afterlife. Either he'll care for eternity or for 3ns.

Re:Who cares?

[EvilBastard]

I care about this cause it's "orbit" as seen from Earth is Really, [nasa.gov]Really, Really [nasa.gov]neat.

Although I admit that everytime I look at the JPL Orbit Diagrams, I feel the urge to load up the original version of Elite [zzap64.co.uk]

Link to JPL's press release

[netjeff]

Here's a link directly to JPL's press release:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2003/1.cfm [nasa.gov]

There are several interesting anmiations.