Our hero Enda is the ideal man to deflect the asteroid

THIS little planet of ours is hanging in the middle of a circular traffic jam of satellites: some gazing out towards the stars, some spying on al Qaeda and the Russians, but most of them ensuring that we have speedy access to Facebook and pornography.

So on Friday evening, you may have cause to be a tad worried. A 45m-wide asteroid with the flirtatious name of 2012 DA14 will swing past Earth.

According to ‘scientists’ (these people are rarely named in the news reports), there’s no chance of it hitting us and sparking a planetary doom-type scenario, but it will come as close as 27,000km: in astronomical terms, near enough for a snog and a bit of mild-to-moderate petting. Most significantly, it will be close enough to be inside the orbit of many of our satellites.