Today a Good Day for Asteroid Flybys

In case you missed it, an asteroid went whizzing past the Earth earlier today.

Just after noon, the 100-foot-wide asteroid named 2014 DX110 passed about 218,000 miles away.

That may seem quite a ways off, but it’s still closer than the moon, which averages about 239,000 miles away.

But another one is about to pass much closer. Asteroid 2014 EC will fly about 35,000 miles above the Earth’s surface just after 2 p.m. Hawaii time, about the time this is being published.

At about 30 feet across, EC is smaller, about half the diameter of the asteroid that exploded over the Russian town of Chelyabinski last year. Its shock wave injured more than 100 people.

But astronomers say there’s nothing to fear from EC, at least for now. However, they say there is a 1-in-2.7 million chance it will strike the Earth by the year 2025.

According to this list provided by NASA, those two are by far the closest of the asteroids expected to pass by Earth over the next several months.