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- LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- They're not exactly like "Armageddon"
or "Deep Impact," and they don't pose any immediate threat, but
U.S. space scientists said Wednesday they have discovered two real asteroids
heading in Earth's direction.
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- Unlike this summer's big-budget Hollywood
movies, these asteroids are not expected to come anywhere near Earth's
orbit for at least several decades.
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- The two asteroids, each of them at least
one mile across, have been classified as "potentially hazardous objects"
by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, because
they are large enough to cause global effects if they hit Earth.
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- But JPL scientists say careful analysis
with the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system -- set up just last
month to detect any potential dangerous space rocks -- shows that neither
object poses an immediate threat.
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- "Our goal is to discover and track
all the potentially dangerous asteroids and comets long before they are
likely to approach Earth," project scientist Eleanor Helm said. "The
discovery of these two asteroids illustrates how NEAT is doing precisely
what it is supposed to do."
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- She said the asteroids passed within
2 million miles of Earth during their last orbit.
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