Pop Rocks: Asteroid Flyby Upstaged by Russian SkyFall

BBC reported that a meteor crashing in Russia's Ural mountains has injured at least 950 people, as the shockwave blew out windows and rocked buildings. Most of those hurt, in the Chelyabinsk region where the meteor fell, suffered cuts and bruises but at least 46 remain in hospital.

A fireball streaked through the clear morning sky, followed by loud bangs. President Vladimir Putin said he thanked God no big fragments had fallen in populated areas. A large meteor fragment landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in Chelyabinsk region. The meteor's dramatic passing was witnessed in Yekaterinburg, 200km (125 miles) to the north, and in Kazakhstan, to the south. "It was quite extraordinary," Chelyabinsk resident Polina Zolotarevskaya told BBC News. "We saw a very bright light and then there was a kind of a track, white and yellow in the sky."

"The explosion was so strong that some windows in our building and in the buildings that are across the road and in the city in general, the windows broke."

Officials say a large meteor partially burned up in the lower atmosphere, resulting in fragments falling earthwards.
Full article from BBC News here

Asteroid 2012 DA-14 Cometh at 2:25 PM Eastern time today (from Space.com)

Later today, of course, at around 2:25 PM Eastern time, NASA will be tracking the flyby of Asteroid 2012 DA14, which will pass into Earth's orbit as close as an estimated 17,000 miles from us. While the asteroid's approach has been in the news for a little while, the meteorite strike in Russia is an even clearer indicator that there's plenty of space junk (Natural and artificial) out there that can and will make its way to the Earth's surface from time to time.
More on the asteroid here
--Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn