Asteroid Past between the moon and earth later this year

Asteroid Past between the moon and earth later this year

The third near-earth asteroid of 2011 will pass between the moon and earth later this year, NASA has confirmed. The 400-metre wide asteroid, named 2005 YU55, will pass within 0.85 lunar distances of the Earth on November 8, 2011.
According to NASA’s Neart Earth Object Program: “Although classified as a potentially hazardous object, 2005 YU55 poses no threat of an Earth collision over at least the next 100 years. 2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid was only sighted for the first time on 22 June by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. Some media outlets proclaimed the asteroid to be as big as New York’s Empire State Building’. According to Minor Planet Center’s ranking charts 2011 MD’s trip was the fifth-closest recorded Asteroid event. The last asteroid to impact earth was ‘2008 TC3’ which was detected on 7 October 2008, just 19 hours before it burned up in the atmosphere over northern Sudan.
Asteroid 2009 BD, which was first observed on 16 January 2009 passed approximately within 0.9 lunar distances (the distance between Earth and the Moon) of earth. Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, passed within the moon’s distance of Earth, September 8 2010. In April 2010 an asteroid roughly as long as a tennis court zoomed past Earth at about the distance of the moon. The space rock to pass at or within lunar distance previous to this was 2009 JL2, an asteroid about 17 to 37 meters across, in May 2009.
There is a roughly 50 percent chance of a 30-meter-plus asteroid striking Earth each century, according to Clark Chapman, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, USA.
The 2011 MD asteroid zoomed passed Earth Monday afternoon at a safe, 7,600-mile distance.
"Updated orbital calculations show 2011 MD will safely pass Earth June 27 1701UTC/1:01pmET, 7,600 miles above Earth's surface," NASA tweeted yesterday, later confirming the fly-by.
NASA said the probability of a near-Earth object (NEO) like 2011 MD actually striking our planet is "essentially zero."
In other asteroid news, NASA's Dawn spacecraft will soon begin the first extended visit to a large asteroid.

Even smaller countries like Sweden are in grave danger because of the damage to their infrastructure.

The list has been compiled using software called called NEOimpactor, short for NASA's 'NEO' or Near Earth Object programme.

Those countries which face massive devastation to their infrastructure are Canada, the US, China, Japan and Sweden.

The countries most at risk:

China

Indonesia

India

Japan

US

The Philippines

Italy

Britain

Brazil

Nigeria

Asteroid Past between the moon and earth later this year