Quote:
A HIGHRISE-sized asteroid slipped quietly past the Earth yesterday, twice as close as the Moon. We didn’t see it coming.
Now designated 2017 AG13, the 10-storey (25-35m) tall space rock was first spotted late on Sunday by the Catalina Sky Survey. It was travelling at 16 kilometres every second.
“This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us,” an expert with astronomy news website Slooh, Eric Feldman, said during a hastily arranged live broadcast of the fly-by yesterday.
He said the asteroid was roughly the same size as that which exploded in the sky above Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013. This blast shattered windows and caused minor damage to buildings over a wide area. More than a thousand people were reportedly injured by flying glass and debris.
