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#asteroidwatch
We Saw This Asteroid Coming from a Mile Away
With all the hullabaloo about giant asteroids that could destroy us, we tend to forget the little guy. Luckily, NASA's Catalina Sky Survey has it covered. Last Monday, CSS astronomers caught sight of an incoming object zooming toward the Earth, and by the time of the asteroid's impact on Tuesday, NASA engineers had mapped out its trajectory almost exactly. This is "the first time we were able to discover and predict an impact before the event," announced Donald Yeomans, the manager of NASA/JPL's Near-Earth Object program — and I'm guessing he did it with no small amount of glee. More »
