Chill. That asteroid sweeping by Earth before Election Day is the size of a mattress
Fires are burning. Cicadas are re-emerging. Coronavirus is spreading. Now an asteroid might strike the planet right before Election Day?
Wrong. Well, at least partially.
Asteroid 2018VP1 will indeed soar past the Earth on Nov. 2, according to several news outlets, but it’s in no way a threat to the planet, NASA says. The celestial body is only about 6.5 feet across, or about as long as a queen-size mattress. It also has a 0.41% chance of entering our atmosphere, which is close to none.
The space agency took to Twitter to settle the alarm after a flood of articles on the asteroid’s passing blasted the internet. NASA said even if 2018VP1 did come hurtling toward Earth, “it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.”
What’s more, the asteroid’s Palermo Scale value — a score developed to help scientists categorize potential impact risks — stands at -3.57. Meanwhile, values between -2 and 0 are those that “indicate situations that merit careful monitoring,” according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies.
The space rock also lost its spot on NASA’s near-Earth objects close approaches list. Earlier this month, Forbes reported that the list showed that 2018VP1 was estimated to come anywhere between 4,700 miles and 260,000 miles to Earth.
That’s farther away from our planet than the moon (about 239,000 miles).
Of some concern was the undetected passing of an SUV-sized asteroid that flew past Earth last week, McClatchy News previously reported.
“Near Earth Asteroids, or NEAs, pass by our home planet all the time,” NASA said. “But an SUV-size asteroid set the record this past weekend for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA.”
The asteroid was approaching from the direction of the sun, shielding it from the human eye, according to the agency. However, this asteroid, too, was small enough — about 10 to 20 feet wide — to burn up before crashing into the planet.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:52 PM.
