RV-sized asteroid will buzz the Earth on Monday | Bad Astronomy

A rock about 10 meters in size will fly past the Earth Monday at 13:30 UTC (09:30 Eastern US time). It’ll be a particularly close shave — passing just 12,400 km (7430 miles) from Earth’s surface; a bit less than the diameter of the Earth itself — but it’ll miss for sure.

We’re in no danger from the asteroid, named 2011 MD, since there’s essentially zero chance it will hit us. Even if it did, it’s too small to impact the surface, and would instead break apart and burn up in the atmosphere. That would be exciting, and make quite a show, but that’s about it.

Here’s a diagram of the asteroid’s trajectory (note that the size of the Earth is not to scale!):

On this scale, the Earth is actually about half the size shown; it was enlarged on the diagram to make it clear. In this smaller diagram here the trajectory is shown from a different angle (edge-on to the Moon’s orbit) with the Earth to scale, and you can see better that 2011 MD will miss ...


Related Posts

Comments are closed.