On February 15, a 45-meter wide asteroid known as "2012 DA14" will pass within 20,000 miles of Earth, which is approximately 1/12th of the way to the Moon and well within range of many Earth-orbiting satellites. While scientists don't anticipate a collision with Earth, it could make for some fantastic skywatching for space geeks in certain parts of the world.

To capture the event, AGI aerospace engineers have used our Systems Tool Kit(STK) software to create an animation showing:
-2012 DA14's deep space trajectory as it approaches Earth
-The pass by Earth below the GEO Belt and crossing the equatorial plane from South to North
-A closeup of the asteroid during its closest approach
-A highlighted portion of Earth orbit that it is expected to pass through

An interactive scenario is available here:
[ Ссылка ]
and can be viewed with the free STK product available here:
[ Ссылка ]
You can view it in 3D, add satellites from the database, fuse it with user trajectories and/or calculate close approaches to orbiting satellites with STK Conjunction Analysis Tools(CAT) available here: [ Ссылка ].

AGI engineers have also created a demo using Cesium, a WebGL virtual globe and map engine. Click here to run the demo: [ Ссылка ]
Note, Cesium doesn't work with Internet Explorer. We recommend installing free Google Chrome.

NOTICE TO MEDIA: To request a broadcast-quality version of this animation, write to media@agi.com. In all uses, please courtesy "STK animation courtesy of Analytical Graphics, Inc."

learn more at [ Ссылка ]

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