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It appears that last Friday we completely lost an asteroid that was flying very close to Earth. Asteroid 2020 VT4 crashed just under 400km above the South Pacific.
An asteroid has just set a new record and we haven’t seen each other
On Saturday, November 14, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) survey at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii blocked the asteroid. It was early in the morning and it had been 15 hours since the asteroid had approached Earth. The space rock was left invisible as it was moving at a very high speed and coming towards Earth from the direction of our blind spot facing the sun.
It was assumed that it was 5-10 meters wide just like a small house. Earth missed an inch by being in a space similar to the point of perihelion for space rock, which happened just 20 hours before Earth’s entry. It set a precedent for the closer non-asteroid space rock passage noted against Earth. This record was then broken once this year, with the 2020 HQ space rock entering 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) from outside Earth on August 16.
Unfortunately, VT4 2020 went unnoticed with a voice closer to 5:20 pm universal time (UT) on Friday November 13 over the South Pacific in the vicinity of the Pitcairn Islands, and followed the edge of the Earth’s shadow as it receded. The 2020 VT4 would surely have been evident as a fast moving +3 size “ star ” on its leg exiting south Tasmania in the pre-dawn sky, if an island-bound spectator or morning sailor had presented to watch.
Asteroid 2020 VT4 will next be seen during its visit to Earth on November 13, 2052 with a passage of 0.02 AU (1.8 million miles, apparently) considerably more inaccessible. The 2020 VT4 record will be difficult to break, but 2020 is still far from being done.
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