CLOSE CALL:  On this day in 2002, a 73-meter asteroid came within 74,000 miles of Earth (approx. one-third the distance to the moon).

If you didn’t notice it, don’t feel bad.  Scientists didn’t see it either until three days later.

If it had hit us, it was capable of causing devastation on the scale of the Tunguska event, which destroyed about 800 square miles of forest in Siberia in 1908.

When the big one comes around–the one with Earth’s name on it–let’s be ready to spot it well ahead of time and deflect it.