Asteroid on path to pass close to Earth

A visitor from outer space is expected to whiz past Earth Monday morning in a close pass. According to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, asteroid 2011 MD, measuring 5 to 20 yards, or the size of a house, will come close enough — 7,500 miles — to observe with a small telescope. By comparison, the moon is approximately 250,000 miles away. There won’t be any chance of spotting it from Rhode Island, however. The asteroid’s path is expected to take it over the South Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Antarctica, at 1 p.m. Eastern time, according to Sky and Telescope Magazine. NASA said an analysis of the 2011 MD’s orbit shows there is no chance of it striking Earth. There is an extremely slight chance, however, NASA said, that it could collide with one of the many satellites orbiting Earth. The celestial visitor’s incoming trajectory will carry it clear of the geosynchronous zone — the area where weather and other satellites “park” so as to hover in an apparently stationary stance over a chosen area of the Earth’s surface. But the planet’s gravity is expected to bend the asteroid’s path profoundly, whipping it into a curve so that it will slingshot right through the geosynchronous ring. NASA said objects of this size pass Earth at this distance about every six years. 2011 MD was discovered only on Wednesday, according to Skymania News and Guide, by LINEAR, a robotic telescope pair in New Mexico that seeks out such near-Earth objects. Skymania quoted Emily Baldwin, of the magazine Astronomy Now, as saying, “We are certain that it will miss us, but if it did enter the atmosphere, an asteroid this size would mostly burn up in a brilliant fireball, possibly scattering a few meteorites.” On Nov. 8, Skymania reported, asteroid 2005 YU55, which is 400 yards across and tips the scale at 50 million tons, will fly inside the orbit of the moon. From Providence journal