Whew. I'll be gone and you guys will be on your own. Couldn't take the stress.
PASADENA, Calif., May 3 (UPI) -- NASA says a near-Earth asteroid was imaged by the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico and scientists ruled out an Earth impact for at least 100 years.
The space agency said data involving asteroid 2005 YU55 were obtained April 19-21 and allowed the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to refine the space rock's orbit, ruling out any possibility of an Earth impact for a century.
The asteroid, approximately 1,300 feet in size, was about 1.5 million miles from Earth when the image was generated.
Steve Chesley of JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office said prior to the Arecibo data, scientists had eliminated nearly all upcoming Earth flybys as possibilities of impact. "But there were a few that had a low remaining probability of impact," Chesley said. "After incorporating the data from Arecibo, we were able to rule impacts out entirely for the next 100 years."
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