NASA have said that a ‘small’ asteroid currently heading towards Earth is likely to be a “close shave”, and have expressed concern over the mysterious nature of this unusual piece of rock. Asteroid 2013 TX68 will pass the Earth on March 5, and although scientists are convinced it is ‘unlikely’ to hit us, they say that any potential impact would be catastrophic. Nationalgeographic.com reports: It could pass at a distance of 9 million miles (14 million km), which is a comfortable 35 times farther than the moon. Or it could come as close as 11,000 miles (17,000 km). That’s about half the altitude that our geosynchronous satellites orbit (but it’s not expected that any satellites will be in danger). The reason for the wide variance in estimates is, essentially, lack of data. The asteroid was discovered and last seen in 2013 by the Catalina Sky Survey. At the time, scientists were only able to gather data on it for three days before it passed in front of the sun and was lost in glare. “While astronomers could determine an orbit for the asteroid, there was some uncertainty in the orbital parameters [or its specific flight trajectory],” says Patrick Taylor, an [...]