Near-Miss Asteroid Breaches Earth’s Ring Of Satellites Six Hours After Discovery

A previously undetected asteroid passed by Earth on Thursday, hurtling through the ring of satellites that encircle the planet and traveling onward, according to NASA. The space agency said that the asteroid, designated 2017 EA, had been detected only six hours before it whizzed past the planet.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Near-Miss Asteroid Breaches Earth’s Ring Of Satellites Six Hours After Discovery

A previously undetected asteroid passed by Earth on Thursday, hurtling through the ring of satellites that encircle the planet and traveling onward, according to NASA. The space agency said that the asteroid, designated 2017 EA, had been detected only six hours before it whizzed past the planet.

More…

“The asteroid was estimated to be only about 3 metres wide”. That comes to about 50 tons.

I wonder what that would be in megatons? BOE calculation gives about 10 kilotons.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Near-Miss Asteroid Breaches Earth’s Ring Of Satellites Six Hours After Discovery

A previously undetected asteroid passed by Earth on Thursday, hurtling through the ring of satellites that encircle the planet and traveling onward, according to NASA. The space agency said that the asteroid, designated 2017 EA, had been detected only six hours before it whizzed past the planet.

More…

The news article title would attract a different amount of attention if it were to say (truthfully):

“2017 EA is the 27th closest approach of an asteroid to Earth in the past ten years”.

Source http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Closest.html

Let’s check size. It’s large. Only four larger asteroids have passed closer to Earth than 2017 in the past ten years.

Three of those larger ones are really quite frightening.
2014 AA, about the same size, grazed atmosphere on 2 Jan 2014
2011 CQ1 was bigger, and missed atmosphere by the smallest of margins on 4 Feb 2011
2008 TS26 was big!, and came four times closer than 2017 EA, on 9 Oct 2008.

http://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news194.html

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Near-Miss Asteroid Breaches Earth’s Ring Of Satellites Six Hours After Discovery

A previously undetected asteroid passed by Earth on Thursday, hurtling through the ring of satellites that encircle the planet and traveling onward, according to NASA. The space agency said that the asteroid, designated 2017 EA, had been detected only six hours before it whizzed past the planet.

More…

The news article title would attract a different amount of attention if it were to say (truthfully):

“2017 EA is the 27th closest approach of an asteroid to Earth in the past ten years”.

Source http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/lists/Closest.html

Let’s check size. It’s large. Only four larger asteroids have passed closer to Earth than 2017 in the past ten years.

Three of those larger ones are really quite frightening.
2014 AA, about the same size, grazed atmosphere on 2 Jan 2014
2011 CQ1 was bigger, and missed atmosphere by the smallest of margins on 4 Feb 2011
2008 TS26 was big!, and came four times closer than 2017 EA, on 9 Oct 2008.

Sorry, I need my brain reexamined. In the above, where I say “big, large, larger” read “small, small and smaller” and visa versa, where I say “really quite frightening” say “not frightening”.

The biggest near miss asteroid was the whopping one (367943) Duende which passed by Earth closer than 2017 EA on 15 Feb 2013.

This thing is 3 m wide?

Larger objects than that enter the atmosphere fairly often, about once a year.