Asteroid near-miss projected for 2029

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="4">Asteroid near-miss projected for 2029</font></p> </b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted Feb. 16, 2005<br> Special to  World Science</font> <b> <font size="2" face="Arial"><br> <br> An asteroid will pass within three Earth-widths of our planet on Friday, April 13, 2029—close enough that Earth’s gravity will deflect the rocky object considerably, scientists said.  </font></b> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b> <font size="2" face="Arial"> But there is no chance it will hit us, added the researchers, with NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office.<br> <br> “On average, one would expect a similarly close Earth approach by an asteroid of this size only every 1300 years or so,” said Paul Chodas, of the NASA office, and colleagues in a statement issued earlier this month.<br> <br> The researchers said their calculations for the approach of the asteroid, called 2004 MN4, come from radar observations taken at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in late January.<br> <br> There is still no exact agreement on what path the asteroid will take, but the researchers said they have narrowed it down to a small range of possibilies, none of which involve an Earth crash.<br> <br> They added that the asteroid will probably be visible with the naked eye around the time of its passage. <br> <br> It will come much closer to the Earth than the Moon is, they said, adding that there is also no chance it will strike the Moon.</font> </p> </b> </body>