An asteroid, imaged in the last days of October this year, was found to have passed incredibly close to our planet. NASA has released radar images of 'near-Earth' asteroid 2007 PA8, which on October 30 was merely 5.6 million miles away from Earth.
And the asteroid hasn't stopped coming closer. As of yesterday, November 5, asteroid 2007 PA8 was only 4 million miles away at 11:42 a.m. EST. According to NASA, this is 17 times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
The series of three radar images show the 1-mile-long asteroid 2007 PA8 on October 28, when it was 6.5 million miles away, then on October 29, and on October 30. The images are scaled to be the same size.
Asteroid 2007 PA8's current near-Earth maneuvering is the closest it will get to Earth for at least 200 years, according to NASA and The Near-Earth Object Observations Program ("Spaceguard"), which plots orbits of objects that could be potentially dangerous to our planet.
An asteroid doomsday scenario has captivated the human imagination, spawning Hollywood movies, and even a scientific competition hosted by the United Nations. Called the 2012 Move an Asteroid Technical Paper Competition, the contest asked for interesting solutions to a space-related problem.
And they got an interesting solution. Winner Sung Wook Paek suggested shooting paintballs at an asteroid to cover it with reflective paint that would then nudge an asteroid off course by causing more light (photons) to bounce off the asteroid. A novel idea, but it doesn't look like any asteroids are heading our way anytime soon, so it might be a while before we start paintballing in space.