Friday, December 21, 2007

Mars in the Path of Asteroid D Day January 30

clipped from news.aol.com
Mars could be in for an asteroid hit.
A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of
slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.
"These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with
really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids," said
Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into
Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space.
Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another
planet.
The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November
and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia
in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb
and wiping out 60 million trees.
If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near
the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring
the Martian plains since 2004.
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