2009 DD45 Comes Within 48,000 Miles Of Planet

The cosmic equivalent of a very close call occurred Monday morning over Earth, while almost everyone below was blissfully unaware.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory tells the Associated Press an asteroid roughly the size of a 10-story building sped by about 48,800 miles above the Pacific Ocean early Monday.

While that may sound like a comfortable margin, that's just under twice the height some telecommunications satellites orbit above Earth... and is about one-fifth the distance from the Earth to the moon.

The object measured between 69-154 feet in diameter, according to JPL. That's roughly the same size as an asteroid that exploded over Tunguska, Siberia in June 1908. That blast -- believed to have been about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb over Hiroshima -- destroyed over 800 square miles of forest and kicked copious amounts of dust into the atmosphere.

Even more disconcerting than the closeness of the encounter, is the fact astronomers didn't detect asteroid 2009 DD45 until last Friday.

And if your stomach weren't already unsettled, consider that scientists believe the asteroid has now been influenced by the Earth's gravity, meaning it may pass even closer to our planet when it next comes around.

FMI: www.jpl.nasa.gov/