Residents of Chelyabinsk may understandably be justa bit jittery, but the rest of us can breathe easy – or at least continue torely on satnav. Asteroid DA14 may be a 45m chunk of rock set to pass Earthwithin the orbit of our geosynchronous satellites, but it won’t come closerthan 1,000km to any of them, and will be more than 5,000km from any of the GPSor Glonass navigation satellites.
So says the Isle of Man-based Space DataAssociation, a non-profit group of satellite operators which tracks such things.Says the SDA’s operations manager Dr TS Kelso: “There is no reason tobelieve that this asteroid poses a threat to any satellites in Earthorbit.” And, he adds: “For reference, satellite operators arenormally concerned with uncoordinated flybys of less than 10 km.”
