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Kilo-wide asteroid won't collide with Earth today, say scientists

Kilo-wide asteroid won't collide with Earth today, say scientists

PHUKET: The world will not end today, as Nasa scientists have confirmed that a kilometre-wide asteroid capable of ending life as we know it, is passing by our planet from a safe distance.

Thursday 14 May 2015 06:16 PM


A depiction by Nasa artists of what it might look like if an asteroid collides with a planet.

A depiction by Nasa artists of what it might look like if an asteroid collides with a planet.

According to Scientists from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Labratory, the huge asteroid named as "1999 FN53" today (May 14) is on a non-collision trajectory zooming past our planet from the safe distance of 10 million kilomtres, about 26 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. 

Some concerned astronomers who had been monitoring the asteroid in recent weeks warned that a collision with earth would be catostrophic, with no less than 1.5 billion casualties projected. 

The asteroid is expected to pass Earth again in 118 years, but Nasa insists it won't be close enough to affect us in any way. 

The most recent and famous extra-terrestial object collision with our planet was in Siberia in 1908, in the Tunguska explosion event.

An object, widely believed to be an astroid between 60 and 200 metres wide, fell an estimated 80 million trees across an area of 2,150 square kilometres in a sparcely populated region.