Monday, March 16, 1998

NASA to the rescue

Just when it looked like a jumbo asteroid would come within a whisker of Earth in 30 years - and maybe even collide with the planet in a memorable and devastating thud - some scientists at NASA have saved the day with a little mathematics.

Responding to an alert from the International Astronomical Union, the NASA folks found some old telescopic pictures of this far-distant space rock, recalculated its course, and discovered that it would whiz past Earth at a distance of some 600,000 miles, not the 30,000 miles or frighteningly less that had been predicted just the day before.

Maybe, of course, you like to live on the edge and prefer the same for your children and grandchildren. Maybe you were looking forward to the suspense in the decades to come, and to the debate about possibly blasting this thing out of the sky and other imaginable solutions.

If not, have a grateful thought or two about NASA, and keep the agency in mind the next time someone asks what the federal government has done for you lately.