A newly discovered small asteroid harmlessly passed Earth on Tuesday, which makes it the second celestial object to zip across Earth in a week.
Newly discovered asteroid was spotted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was tracking it from quite some time. According to the NASA space observers this was the sixth closest object which shaved past the Earth.
Asteroid named ‘2012 KT42’ passed the earth orbit on 8,950 miles, which is identical to what the astronomers have expected. The previous asteroid came close to the Earth on Monday and it was captured by many amateur astronomers however, the latest one comes as a surprise.
Close shave by asteroid
The astronomers detected the asteroid quite late because of its small size and it was mighty close to the earth surface. Asteroid named ‘2012 KT42’ came within 8,959 miles of Earth surface, in the same orbit where geosynchronous satellites are orbiting.
However, the asteroid was small in size of around 15 feet, identical to a minivan. Due to its small size there wasn’t any threat because if it would have been directing towards Earth surface, major portion of it would have been burned in the atmosphere.
Astronomer Tony Philips on Spaceweather.com wrote, “In the case of KT42, the rock would likely disintegrate almost entirely in the atmosphere, peppering the ground below with relatively small meteorites”.
Encounter of previous asteroid
The previous asteroid which passed near Earth on Monday was quite big in comparison to the most recent asteroid passed from the geosynchronous satellite orbit. Asteroid ‘2012 KP24’ was less than 70 feet across identical to the size of the Blue Whale.
There was no any threat from the asteroid ‘2012 KP24’ as it flew away some 32,000 miles of Earth on May 28, after been detected last week by the astronomers. There is nothing to be afraid of flying asteroids as their potential of hitting and then causing damage to earth is very minimal.
Plenty of asteroids flew passed Earth every time which we even don’t know and major portion of the Earth is covered with water so the chances are high that it will fall in sea even if it survives in the atmosphere.