The asteroid 2018 VP1 will hit Earth on November 2, a day before the US President votes for the next president. In a year where unexpected disasters have become increasingly routine, NASA is working hard to calm fears of a possible collision.
According to the space agency, even if this asteroid hit Earth’s atmosphere, it would be too small to do any damage.
“Asteroid 2018VP1 is too small. Around 6.5 feet, and there is no threat to Earth !,” NASA Asteroid Dekho tweeted on Sunday. “It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet’s atmosphere, but if it does, it will disintegrate due to its extremely small size.”
The asteroid was discovered in 2018 by scientists at the Zwiki Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in Caltech. Since then, they have been struggling to track its location and trajectory due to its small size.
NASA researchers have formally listed “near-Earth objects” since 1998, with about 19,000 of them discovered so far. None of the known objects can be dangerous to planets that are on track to pass Earth in the near future.
In fact, asteroids fly all the time on Earth – sometimes without us even knowing it. Just last week, Asteroid It became the closest record ever flown within 1,830 miles of Earth, and scientists were not even aware of its existence until it had already passed our planet.
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