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Next year, the U.S. space agency plans to spend $150 million on its so-called "planetary defense" programs. Some of the money would be going to develop systems to detect asteroids and comets like the football-field-sized space rock that zipped past the Earth this summer at 55,000 mph. It was only spotted by astronomers 24-hours after it passed by.
This close, passing asteroid was characterized as a "city killer" by Swinburne University astronomy professor Alan Duffy. If it had been on a collision course, it would have crashed into the Earth with more than 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine likened it to the meteor that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.
Even though NASA missed this relatively small asteroid, the agency is "really good at characterizing, cataloging and tracking objects that are one kilometer or larger, which is the type of object that could damage the Earth permanently, Bridenstine said. But NASA is investing in capabilities to discover these smaller objects.
Comment: Just five days before this meteor sighting, another fireball lit up the skies over Tasmania and Victoria.