Don’t Worry, They Say, 100-Foot Asteroid Will Miss Us Today

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

But also don’t worry, the experts say.

As we wrote last month when an asteroid about 900 feet long passed near enough to Earth to generate headlines about a “close encounter,” more rocks are always headed our way.

And as the schedule of what’s known to be closing in shows, asteroid DX110 is due today. The 100-foot wide chunk of space debris is supposed to pass by within about 217,000 miles of our planet.

How close is that? Well, the experts at the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory point out that the “average distance between Earth and its moon is about 239,000 miles.” (Don’t worry, by the way, the asteroid is not on a collision path with the moon, either.)

As for the time when we should we all listen (and hopefully not hear) a big whoosh, JPL says DX110 is due to zip past around 4 p.m. ET.

Don’t expect to see anything, though. Australian Eye News notes that “backyard observers are likely out of luck since the asteroid will be too dark to view directly.”