Super Bowl’s Killer Flyby Wasn’t The A-10s And P-51s But Something Out Of This World
Bianluca Masi (Virtual Telescope Prject) / Michael Schwartz (Tenagra Observatories)
Most People Had No Idea.
On January 15th, 2002, NASA identified “a potentially hazardous asteroid alled 2002 AJ129.” It’s about .3 to .75 miles across and is classified as a mid-size asteroid.
As Super Bowl 52 was raging on February 4th, 2018, this particular piece of rock was making a 76,000 mile per hour pass over our skies while many of us were glued to our T.Vs. Talk about thinking of grander things.
Although classified as hazardous, NASA stated that there was no chance of it hitting on Super Bowl Sunday nor over the next century. They’ve been closely tracking it over the past decade and a half and know its orbit intimately. Though not in our lifetime, there is a chance of it striking eventually they said.
To put it into perspective, our moon is about 240,000 miles away from the Earth. This asteroid came about 2.6 million miles from us but NASA classifies them as “hazardous” if they’re within 4.65 million miles from us. This one fits the bill pretty well.
All in all, an asteroid hitting Earth would be just as shocking as that Brady fumble though.
