Explained: Near-miss asteroids (w/ Video)

On May 29, an asteroid the size of a bus came whizzing past Earth at 10 times the speed of a fired bullet. The near-miss asteroid, named 2012 KT42 — or “KT42” for short — streaked across the orbits of weather and television satellites, 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface, making it the sixth-closest asteroid approach on record. While the object had little chance of colliding with Earth, its approach gave scientists an opportunity to run a rapid-response program — or as MIT’s Richard Binzel calls it, an asteroid-tracking “fire drill” — to gain as much information as possible from the incoming space rock.

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