Daily Mail
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:59 EST
Astronomers spotted the object only 15 hours before its closest approach to our planet last Friday.
Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.
Even had it been on collision course with us, the 23ft wide asteroid - known as 2009 VA - is unlikely to have made much of an impact because it would probably have all but burnt up in the atmosphere.
It was picked up by the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona, then identified by the Minor Planet Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a near Earth object and plotted by experts at Nasa.











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