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Too Close for Comfort: Asteroid Passed Within 75,000 Miles of Earth
By SPACE.com Staff
posted: 12:44 pm ET
20 June 2002
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An asteroid about the size of a football field made one of the closest known approaches to Earth last Friday, June 14, zooming by just 75,000 miles (119,229 kilometers) away, less than a third of the distance to the Moon An asteroid about the size of a football field made one of the closest known approaches to Earth last Friday, June 14, zooming by just 75,000 miles (119,229 kilometers) away, less than a third of the distance to the Moon. The object was not detected until June 17, by astronomers working on the LINEAR search program, near Socorro, New Mexico. The space rock, now named 2002 MN, was travelling at more than 23,000 mph (10 km/s) when it passed Earth. The last time a known asteroid passed this close was back in December 1994, according to a statement issued by the Near Earth Object Information Center in the United Kingdom. The asteroid is small compared to some but still capabale of causing local devastation had it hit the planet. A similar sized rock is thought to have exploded above Tunguska, Siberia in 1908. Thousands of acres of forest were flattened. Other boulder sized objects and smaller rocks routinely crash through Earth's atmosphere but go largely unnoticed. Astronomers say several close passes -- though not this close -- probably occur yet are undetected each year. Every few months, typically, an asteroid passing within the Moon's orbit is noticed before or shortly after it makes its closest approach to Earth. An undetected asteroid passed about twice as far away in March.
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