NASA spots asteroid on crash course with Earth several hours before it hit

JUST hours after US space agency NASA detected it, an asteroid smashed into Earth on the weekend. The space rock was only about six feet (1.8 metres) wide by the time it was identified, making it a pretty small threat as far as Earth-bound asteroids go. Given the name 2018 LA, it was first spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on June 2 in the US at which point the asteroid was as close to Earth as the moon. Video posted on YouTube, from a farm showed a fireball swiftly descending and getting bigger, and then a blinding flash in the sky. It burst apart several kilometres up, according to NASA.