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It was close and it was a record.
An asteroid known as 2020 VT4 passed just under 400 kilometers over the South Pacific Ocean. According to NASA it is the closest space rock known to fly past Earth without crashing into it.
The Earth-impacted Hawaii asteroid Last Alert System (ATLAS) recorded it on November 14.
According to phys.org, the space rock is about 10 meters wide, which is about the size of a small house.
“This sets a record for the closest documented non-meteoric asteroid passage against Earth. This record has already been broken once this year, with asteroid 2020 HQ passing 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from the Earth’s surface on August 16, ”the outlet reports.
Unfortunately, there were no images of the space rock whizzing across our planet. However, “2020 VT4 would certainly have been visible as a rapidly moving ‘star’ of magnitude +3 on its outbound stretch south of Tasmania in the pre-dawn sky if an island-bound observer or morning sailor had been watching, “says phys.org.
Objects close to the Earth
2020 VT4 is considered a NEO (Near-Earth Object) given how close it is to the earth.
According to NASA, “potentially dangerous” NEOs are defined as space objects that fall within 0.05 astronomical units and measure more than 460 feet in diameter.
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