- An asteroid has a bad chance of putting us out of our misery on November 2nd.
- That’s a day before the US election.
- The asteroid, named “2018 VP1,” is small, and is unlikely to make contact with the Earth’s atmosphere.
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An asteroid has a bad chance of putting us out of our misery on November 2, because it goes one day before the US election, one day before the US, according to NASA.
Named “2018 VP1,” the asteroid is relatively small, with an estimated diameter of 1.8 to 3.9 meters, according to NASA data.
CNN reports that only 0.41% is likely to be effective on Earth, but celestial objects that are large are still burning in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA.
Between the coronavirus pandemic, a reckoning with racial justice, sky-high depression and anxiety, election season, and murder horns (which do not actually invade the US), some often want the chances to be a little higher.
2018 VP1 has previously had a few close encounters with Earth, dating back to 1970. The last time it was visited was in November of 2018, roughly when it was discovered at the Palomar Observatory in California.
It’s back, after a two-year orbit around the sun, coming within 4,800 and 260,000 miles of our sphere, NASA data shows. For reference, the International Space Station is about 254 miles above the planet.
The size of asteroids like these makes them difficult to spot until they get close to Earth, but the majority come through much further than the moon, NASA said in a recent release.
In fact, one named 2020 QG orbited the Earth last week 1,830 miles above the Indian Ocean – the closest such encounter on record – and NASA did not even see it coming, they said.
“It’s quite an achievement to find these small close-in asteroids in the first place because they pass by so quickly,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at JetAA’s Propulsion NASA Laboratory in Southern California.
“There’s typically only a short window of a few days before or after close approach, when this little one of an asteroid is close to Earth to be bright enough, but not so close that it’s too hard in ‘ the sky moves to be detected by a telescope, “he said.
NASA did not immediately respond to a request from Business Insider for more information.
