Of popular mechanics
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An SUV-sized asteroid called 2020 QG zipped past Earth on Sunday, reaching within 1,830 miles of our home planet.
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This is the nearest flyby ever recorded.
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Scientists work round the clock to follow potentially dangerous asteroids as 2020 QG.
An asteroid the size of a Ford Bronco just swinging through Earth in the closest recorded flyby of a celestial object yet. The nearby call occurred on Sunday, August 16, at 12:08 PM EDT, because the asteroid (2020 QG) just flew 1,830 miles above the southern Indian Ocean.
For reference, the distance between Las Vegas and Chicago is nearly 1,800 miles. 2020 QG flew past Earth at a speed of about 8 miles per second, according to NASA.
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Asteroids in 2020’s large range of QG (about 10 to 20 feet wide) are very difficult to spot. A student in India first spotted the space rock and alerted researchers at the Zwicky Transient Facility at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California, according to SyFy Wire. Researchers confirmed the asteroid 6 hours after its closest approach when it left Earth.
According to NASA, asteroids of this size pass close to Earth several times a year. Called a meteoroid 2011 CQ1 has previously held the title for closest recorded approach, with its flyby of 3,400 kilometers in February 2011. As asteroids glide to Earth, its trajectory is altered by the gravitational pull of our planet. Astronomers have witnessed this shift in the orbit of QG 2020.
“It’s very cool to see a small asteroid through this close up, because we can dramatically bend the Earth’s trajectory in its trajectory,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at JetAppulsion Laboratory of NASA, in a press release statement. “Our calculations show that this asteroid rotated 45 degrees as it swung across our planet.”
So what would have happened if the asteroid the Hit Earth? Fortunately nothing catastrophic. It would probably have burned into the Earth’s atmosphere, in a dramatic fireworks display such as the eruption of an asteroid that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013. Although most of the 66-foot meteor burned on approach, caused it still does some damage: Windows broke when the meteor plowed through the earth’s atmosphere, injuring more than a thousand people in the region.
Do not lose too much sleep over asteroids like 2020 QG. Astronomers at institutes like the Center for Studies for Objects Nearby, de Catalina Sky Survey, and the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center keep an eye out for potentially dangerous objects that could one day cross paths with Earth.
You might as well go over
