A recently discovered small-sized asteroid, called 2017 YD2, passed by Earth at 2:37 UTC. This object was located at a safe distance of about 2.2 distances from the Earth-Moon (lunar distances, LD) from our planet, which corresponds to 845,000 kilometers.
The asteroid 2017 YD2 was discovered on December 23 using the Mount Lemmon Survey (MLS) sky survey, which uses a 1.52-meter Cassegrain reflector installed at the Mount Lemmon Observatory, Arizona, USA. MLS is one of the most fruitful sky surveys in terms of detecting near-Earth objects. To date, with its help, over 50,000 small planets have been discovered.
According to astronomers 2017, YD2 is an atheroid of the Aton family; its diameter is from 3 to 11 meters. This asteroid has an absolute value of 28.7, the major semiaxis is of the order of 0.84 and revolves around the Sun with a period of 281 days. During the morning flight past Earth, the asteroid moved at a speed of 8.3 kilometers per second.
It is expected that in 4 hours after this rapprochement with the Earth, the asteroid 2017 YD2 will pass the Moon, remaining at a distance of approximately 518,000 kilometers from it. The next span of this asteroid past Earth is expected on October 4, 2020, when the cosmic stone will be located at a distance of about 64 LD from our planet.
As of December 27, 1872 potentially dangerous objects were discovered, but none of us lies on the collision course with our planet. Potentially dangerous include asteroids measuring more than 100 meters, which approach the Earth at a distance closer than 19.5 LD.