500-foot asteroid to pass near Earth
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
An asteroid at least 500 feet long will make a rare close pass by Earth next week, but there is no chance of an impact. The object, known as 2007 TU24, is expected to whiz by Tuesday with its closest approach at 334,000 miles, or about 1.4 times the distance to the moon.
The nighttime encounter should be bright enough for medium-sized telescopes to get a glimpse, said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
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