There have been quite a few foreign objects lighting up the night sky lately. Most recently, the Leonid meteor shower got a lot of attention on Tuesday night, and rightfully so. It was an awesome display.

But this article from Space.com highlights how Leonid isn’t the only heavenly body snagging headlines of late. We’ve also seen a couple of very near-misses from asteroids that would have packed quite a punch if they’d hit the Earth, including one on November 6 that nobody saw coming until about 15 hours before it blew past us.

But have no fear — NASA is spending upwards of $4 million per year to better identify and defend against just that type of surprise. Because no one likes an uninvited visitor who packs a wollop equal to six kilotons of TNT. That’s just rude.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 8:44 am and is filed under Notes from Dom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.