close one

Rhonda referred me to an article on Business Insider (OK...) on an asteroid that just missed Earth. My first reaction was, yeah, so, happens on the time...

But digging deeper, this one is notable. It is, purportedly, the closest pass ever, at less than 3000 kilometres.

I looked it up on Spaceweather.com and found it in the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) list.

• name: 2020 QG
• date (UT) of closest approach: 2020-Aug-16
• miss distance (LD): 0
• velocity (km/s): 12.3
• diameter (m): 4

Whoa. Look at that! A miss distance of zero lunar diameters!

I also checked the data at the NASA JPL solar system dynamics web page. It's an Apollo asteroid.

Along with your other personal protection equipment, now you need a hard hat!

Now, to keep this all in perspective, a four metre asteroid would probably burn up. It is estimated that the dinosaur killing asteroid that left the Chicxulub crater was anywhere from 11 to 81 kilometres in size.