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Chelyabinsk-sized SURPRISE asteroid to skim Earth, satnav birds

Space rock appears out of nowhere, buzzes planet on Sunday

A 60-foot-wide asteroid only discovered last week will have a close encounter with the Earth on Sunday, sliding past our planet a scant 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) from the surface.

The asteroid, dubbed 2014 RC, was only discovered on August 31 by the US Catalina Sky Survey. It was confirmed by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Hawaii a day later. On September 7 it will pass by Earth at 1118 PDT (1818 GMT), a few thousand miles outside the Clarke orbit used by geostationary satellites.

"At the time of closest approach, 2014 RC will be approximately one-tenth the distance from the center of Earth to the moon, or about 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers)," NASA said in a statement.

"The asteroid's apparent magnitude at that time will be about 11.5, rendering it unobservable to the unaided eye. However, amateur astronomers with small telescopes might glimpse the fast-moving appearance of this near-Earth asteroid."

2014 RC is about the same size as the Chelyabinsk meteor that injured 1,500 people as it exploded over Russia last February and appears to be moving about as fast. How much damage this space rock could do if it hit Earth depends on its angle of descent and what it's made of.

One thing is certain however, with only a week's warning we'd just have to sit here and take it – there'd be no time to organize a crack team of deep core drillers or develop the technology to hit the thing with a nuclear missile (which may make matters worse in any case).

Astronomers will be watching 2014 RC closely as it passes by and zooms off around the Sun. It's likely that the rock will be swinging by at some point in the future and its encounter with Earth's gravity will change the asteroid's orbit slightly, potentially putting it in position for an even closer encounter with our planet. ®

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