On Saturday, the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the celestial object, known as 2018VP1, is expected to pass near Earth one day before the US presidential election on November 2.
Luckily, the asteroid is not huge. It has a diameter of 0.002 kilometers, or about 6.5 feet, according to NASA’s data. It was first identified at Palomar Observatory in California in 2018. NASA says it is not considered a “potentially hazardous object” due to its small size.
Potentially hazardous objects are asteroids or other space objects that have an orbit taking them close to Earth and are large enough to cause significant regional damage should they actually hit the planet.
2️⃣ days til #AsteroidDay!
The second most likely asteroid to strike Earth is 2018 VP1. A tiny little thing, it is estimated to be just 2.4 m in diameter and has a (relatively) high chance of striking Earth in November this year of 1 in 193 #SpaceCare #PlanetaryDefence pic.twitter.com/fYI9Dk3mXt
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) June 28, 2020
Just last week, an asteroid flew just 1,830 miles over the southern Indian Ocean. The asteroid went by the identifier ZTF0DxQ – but has now been formally entered into NASA’s database as 2020 QG.
Mount Palomar Observatory in California saw the asteroid first almost six hours after it flew by the planet. Telescope observations estimate the asteroid had a diameter of about three to six meters, making it somewhere between the size of a car and a pickup truck.
Even though the space agency says there were three potential impacts, “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days”, it did not think a direct impact was likely, reports The Independent.
