You've probably seen the news about an asteroid hitting Earth before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 2 -- well, NASA says there's nothing to worry about. Although yes, an asteroid called 2018 VP1 is approaching Earth, it won't be a threat to our planet, NASA officials have said.
"Asteroid 2018 VP1 is very small, approx. 6.5 feet [2 meters], and poses no threat to Earth!" NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office wrote on its Asteroid Watch Twitter account on Aug. 23. "It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet's atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size."
The flyby this year will be the first close approach to Earth for the asteroid since it was identified by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory near San Diego in 2018. Yet though scientists consider the occurrence a close approach, the space rock will remain pretty far from Earth: more than 260,000 miles. That is almost the same distance at which the moon orbits Earth. As long as it stays on its path, which it likely will, there shouldn't be a cause for an alarm.
In an odd coincidence, on Election Day itself, Nov. 3, another asteroid will be making a fast approach to our planet. According to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, the space rock, named 2020 HF4, is marginally larger at 26 to 60 feet across but will stay even, much further away, about 16 times the distance of the moon.
By way of contrast, the Zwicky Transient Facility observed the nearest identified asteroid flyby earlier this month when, according to NASA, a tiny space rock named 2020 QG passed around 1,830 miles above Earth's surface. That small space rock, too, went on its way in peace and would have crashed to bits in the atmosphere of Earth if it had not.
The flyby was not expected and shocked many. Astronomers were not able to detect the swooping asteroid until about six hours after the closest approach to the rock, according to Palomar Observatory.
NASA only recognizes a few of such Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Many won't cross the line of sight of any telescope, and other extremely dangerous asteroids have snuck up on scientists in recent years. This could kill tens of thousands of people if the wrong one falls through our NEO surveillance technology's gaps.
As the U.S. Congress has mandated since 2005, NASA is continually monitoring the sky for these risks of this type.
