Happy Near Miss Day!

Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico Image by NASA

19 years ago, March 23, 1989, Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius passed within 700,000 km (400,000 miles) of Earth, passing through the exact position the Earth was only six hours before.

Had it impacted, it would have generated an explosion thousands of times more powerful than the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. So let’s not forget the importance of projects like the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which search the skies, keeping an eye on the Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that could reset the human race back to the Stone Age in the blink of an eye.