As you probably have heard, today, February 15th, a 150-foot (45 meter) asteroid is whizzing by the Earth a hair’s breath from the surface. Missing us by only 14,000 miles, well within the 22,300 mile orbit of the Geostationary satellites that orbit around the Earth’s equator.

I wanted to put this in perspective for you with some of the chilling and fascinating facts:

This is approximately the same size as the asteroid that hit the Earth in Russia in Siberia (the “Tunguska Event”) on June 30th 1908.

That impact was equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs & knocked down 80 million trees down over an area covering 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq mi).

Had it hit near a population center it would have killed millions of people.

Continued:

via Planetary Resources – The Asteroid Mining Company – Future asteroid mining industry will provide capability to aid the deflection of potentially hazardous objects near Earth.