Earthlings almost had to duck; a newly discovered asteroid whizzed close by our planet last month.
How close? 4.2 million miles. A whisper thin margin on a cosmic scale.
And it’s coming back…in 19 years.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the asteroid, named 2013 TV135, was discovered on October 8th by astronomers in the Ukraine.
After plotting 2013 TV135 for about a week, scientists realized how close it had come to our planet.
The asteroid is about 1,300 feet in size and its four-year orbit carries it from Jupiter to Earth.
The future track of this asteroid is difficult to plot, but the JPL says it will be in our neighborhood again in 2032.
And there is only a one in 63,000 chance it will hit Earth.
“To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in 2032 at about 99.998 percent,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.