Radar image of 1950 DA acquired by the Arecibo Observatory on March 4, 2001 (NASA/JPL/S. Ostro)
There are over 10,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) that have been identified so far — asteroids and comets of varying sizes that approach the Earth’s orbital distance to within about 28 million miles (45 million km). Of the 10,000 discoveries, roughly 10 percent are larger than six-tenths of a mile (one kilometer) in size — large enough to have disastrous global consequences should one impact the Earth.
This is one of them...
