This year has already seen plenty of excitement from crazy weather, solar flares, earthquakes and other naturally occurring strangeness, but next week will bring another phenomenon -- an aircraft carrier-sized asteroid swinging past the Earth in a trajectory that brings it closer than the moon.
Don't be alarmed, though; according to NASA, the 2005 YU55 asteroid poses no risk to Earth.
The 1,300-foot wide asteroid will come as close as 202,000 miles from Earth, a distance that is closer than that little rock known as the Moon that is in orbit around the Earth. YU55's path will bring it that close on Nov. 8 then it won't be coming back for a closer swing past our planet until 2094, when it is believed it will come within 167,000 miles.
What would happen if an asteroid the size of 2005 YU55 actually hit the Earth? According to National Science Foundation astronomer Thomas Statler, an impact of that size would definitely cause disaster. He told USAToday that an ocean impact from such an asteroid would create a 7.0 magnitude earthquake and would result in a tsunami with 70-foot high waves 60 miles away.
Certainly this isn't the first close call this year with items traveling in space.
2011 MD Asteroid
Back in June, an asteroid -- 2011 MD -- came sailing past the Earth at a too-close-for-comfort distance of 7,430 miles. That's 32 times closer than the Moon. The roughly 30-100-foot asteroid was only discovered a week before it's flyby and its path brought it close enough that it could be seen by folks in Africa and maybe even Australia.
UARS Satellite
September brought the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) crashing down out of its orbit. It was uncertain where the bus-sized satellite would crash-land at but NASA officials were certain most of the craft would burn up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Final reports state that the pieces landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and left debris over a 500-mile area but watchers were a little nervous while waiting to see exactly where UARS would make re-entry.
ROSAT Satellite
Just a month after the UARS frenzy, a German satellite known as ROSAT, made its "swan song" in a similar fashion after losing orbit and re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists were uncertain where the satellite would crash but believed most of the space junk would burn up before reaching the Earth's surface. The ROSAT pieces are believed to have crashed into the Bay of Bengal -- between India and Myanmar.
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