NASA’s newly discovered asteroid called 2020 SW will give earth a not so socially distant pass.
“There are a large number of tiny asteroids like this one, and several of them approach our planet as close as this several times every year,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The record breaking close approach was the galactic equivalent of a bullet grazing ones skin, but fortunately the small size of the asteroid would have likely resulted in it breaking apart, even if its trajectory lined up with earth.
According to NASA, there are likely hundreds of millions of near earth asteroids similar in size to 2020 SW and 2020 QG, making them extremely hard to discover until they are very close to earth.
The asteroids size greater than three-and-a-half football fields, making it exceedingly rare for a large body to pass with such close proximity to earth, giving scientists what’s expected to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to study asteroids.
