Asteroid 2012 DA14 is almost certainly not going to hit the Earth next February

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. No, they don't travel at anything like the speed of light

They are in orbit round the Sun, and travel at similar speeds to the Earth and other planets.

The NASA page that Phil Plait links to actually gives their estimate of the relative speed of Earth and the asteroid at the Feb 2013 near approach - about 8.1 km/s. That is marginally more than the 7.8 km/s of satellites in low earth orbit.

In fact, that's not that much more than the escape velocity at that distance (27,000 km) - which is 5.43 km/s according to this. So it would seem to me that Earth will have quite a significant effect on the asteroid's orbit when it comes that close.