(From the July/August 1999 issue of StarDate magazine)
A half-mile-wide asteroid could pass less than 20,000 miles above Earth's surface in 2027, according to NASA scientists. But asteroid 1999 AN10, discovered in January, presents no risk of colliding with Earth during the encounter. Early calculations of the asteroid's orbit show that it will pass somewhere between 19,000 and 600,000 miles from Earth on August 7, 2027. The most likely gap is 32,000 miles -- less than one-eighth the distance from Earth to the Moon. Earth's gravity could bend the asteroid's orbit into a collision course with our planet during later encounters, although astronomers say the chance of an impact is no more than one in 500,000.
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