At 5:45 a.m. (EST) Monday, an asteroid (DD45) with a diameter of 60 to 150 feet nearly crashed into Earth. The space rock sped past the planet at a distance of 49,000 miles, about one-fifth of the distance separating us from the moon and only two times as far as some satellites currently orbiting Earth.

“This was pretty darn close,” said astronomer Timothy Spahr of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Wednesday.

It seems the size of this asteroid is similar to one that blasted over 800 square miles of forested land in Siberia in 1908. DD45 was discovered only a few weeks ago by Australian scientists, who concluded right away that the object was no danger to our planet.

It’s frightening to think that an object with a diameter as small as 60 feet could vaporize over 800 miles of land. With only a few weeks of warning, do you think our governments could do something in time about a threat determined to be “risky?”

[Via AP]