Another asteroid made a close pass to the Earth, on January 24, at 11:54 EDT (5:54 UTC), the second one to do so in as many weeks. Asteroid 2017 BX’s close pass — just within the Moon’s orbit — follows asteroid 2017 AG13’s January 9 flyby by a mere 15 days. While this new asteroid missed us as well, and wouldn’t cause much damage if it were to actually to have hit us, it does set up a disturbing trend, as both 2017 BX and 2017 AG13 weren’t discovered until mere days before their closest approaches.
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A small asteroid passed extremely close to the Earth on January 9, missing us by only 192,500 kilometers (119,500 miles), roughly half the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Because of its small size, the asteroid, called 2017 AG13, wasn’t spotted until two days before its approach.
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has just announced that they have discovered an asteroid that will pass near the Earth on October 31. While it will zip by us at a safe distance, at approximately 280,000 miles (450,000km) away, just outside of the Moon’s orbit, the asteroid is troubling in that it was only detected on October 10, less than two weeks ago.
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The media is bursting with scare stories over asteroid 1999-FN53. It’s a kilometer wide and it’s going to make a close pass on Thursday at .68 astronomical units (AU). Will it strike Earth? Highly unlikely, NASA says. Its high speed of 30,000 mph means that it should be easily propelled past us without slowing down. If it did, it would essentially destroy civilization, leading to the death of at least a third of mankind.

It will not impact Earth on its initial pass, but only in the extremely unlikely event that it was caught by our planet’s gravity and began to orbit us. If that happened, it would eventually strike the planet. It is approximately twice the size of Mt. Everest and a strike would have devastating results.
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