© urikyo33 / Pixabay
Earlier today, planet Earth was buzzed by a tiny asteroid that ventured
incredibly close to the planet's surface, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have announced. Cruising through space at speeds of a little over 19,300 mph, the minuscule space rock
passed closer than the moon, creeping in within just 65,100 miles of Earth.
To put that into perspective, the moon sits at an average distance of 238,900 miles from Earth.
This means that during today's extremely close flyby of Earth, the tiny
rock flew at just 0.28 times the distance to the moon.
The wayfaring space rock approached Earth in the early hours of the afternoon, reaching its closest point to Earth at 1:28 p.m. ET. Several hours before its extremely close encounter with Earth, the asteroid swung by the moon, passing within 167,400 miles from its cratered surface.
Today's near-miss was one of the closest asteroid encounters of the entire year.
While Earth has seen quite an impressive number of close asteroid approaches over the past few months, very few rocks have wandered this close to the planet's surface.
Among the recent asteroids flybys that have sent fast-zipping space rocks flying closer than the moon in the last couple of months, the most noteworthy is a 33-foot asteroid that scraped past Earth at 0.48 times the lunar distance in early September. More recently, a larger 91-foot asteroid skimmed Earth from halfway the distance to the moon on October 31.
Comment: The American Meteor Society received 39 reports of this fireball. It was also seen in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.