Jumbo Asteroid has close shave with Earth

An asteroid between 11 to 34 meters across (36 to 111ft), roughly the size of 10 jumbo African elephants, made a remarkably close approach to Earth on Monday morning, passing by at a distance only half that of the Moon. According to the Slooh Observatory, the space rock, dubbed 2017 AG13, was moving at about 10 miles per second, making it hard to

spot with a telescope. “This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us,” Eric Edelman, an astronomer with Slooh, said during a live broadcast of the surprise flyby at 7:47am ET on January 9. The near-Earth object, or NEO, has “a particularly elliptical orbit,” he noted, adding that “it actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth.” READ MORE