{"id":212223,"date":"2020-08-19T11:31:05","date_gmt":"2020-08-19T11:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=212223"},"modified":"2020-08-21T06:55:55","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T06:55:55","slug":"asteroid-makes-closest-fly-by-of-earth-on-record-and-nasa-didnt-see-it-until-after-the-close-shave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=212223","title":{"rendered":"Asteroid makes closest fly-by of Earth on record – and NASA didn’t see it until after the close shave"},"content":{"rendered":"

Q Radio \u2013 Aug 19, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An asteroid the size of a car has flown past Earth closer than any seen before without hitting the planet – and NASA admits: “We didn’t see it coming.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Known as asteroid 2020 QG, NASA<\/strong> said the space<\/strong> rock passed 1,830 miles (2,950 km) above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n

If it had actually been on an impact trajectory, it would likely have become a “fireball” as it broke up in the Earth’s atmosphere, the US space agency said.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are hundreds of millions of small asteroids, but they are extremely hard to discover until they get very close to Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth’s gravity dramatically bend its trajectory,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to its size, it is unlikely 2020 QG posed any danger to the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it was only after the close shave that experts became aware of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr Chodas told Business Insider: “The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun. We didn’t see it coming.”<\/span><\/p>\n

It was first recorded as just a long streak in a wide-field camera image taken by the Zwicky Transient Facility in California – a robotic telescope which scans the sky for moving objects like comets and asteroids.<\/span><\/p>\n

The image was taken six hours after the closest point of approach as the asteroid, measuring between three to six metres across and travelling at about 27,600mph (44,400kph) – almost eight miles per second – was heading away from Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many very small asteroids hit Earth each year, but only a few have actually been detected in space a few hours before impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

On average, an asteroid the size of 2020 QG passes this closely only a few times a year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Chodas, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory admits: \u201cWe didn’t see it coming”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212223"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212226,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212223\/revisions\/212226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}