Little asteroid whizzes close to Earth harmlessly

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — A 100-foot-diameter asteroid passed close but harmlessly by Earth on Thursday, astronomers said.

The hurtling rock passed about 26,500 miles above the southern Atlantic Ocean at 2:08 p.m. PST.

It was the closest recorded encounter between Earth and an asteroid, said Steven Chesley, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who works on a program looking for such objects.

Such encounters, however, are actually believed to occur at the rate of one every two years and have simply not been detected, he said.

If it had hit Earth, it likely would have broken up in the atmosphere.