"No Earth impact is possible," said Donald Yeomans, who manages the Near-Earth-Object office at the Pasadena, Calif.-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The NASA unit monitors relatively small space objects such as DA14 to measure the risks they present to Earth. Researchers said the asteroid's close trajectory would help NASA in preparing for an eventual encounter with a near-Earth object. DA14 was discovered in February last year.
While a strike by an asteroid of DA14's size would do "a lot of regional destruction," it would not be catastrophic to the planet's population, said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object observations program in Washington.
Yeomans said the damage from DA14 if it were to hit would rival an impact event in Russia in 1908 that leveled trees over an 820-square-mile territory. The asteroid that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs was about six miles in diameter.
The NASA scientists said the asteroid would still pass above the orbits of most of the communications satellites circling Earth, and doesn't pose a threat to the International Space Station, which moves above the planet at about 250 miles.
Amateur astronomers will need a small telescope to see the asteroid, which would appear as a moving pinpoint in the night sky, said Timothy Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass. The best viewing location for DA14's closest approach is Indonesia, with sky gazers in Eastern Europe, Australia, and Asia also getting good looks.
