Asteroid 2017 VL2 zoomed terrifyingly close to Earth and Nasa didn’t see it coming

http://metro.co.uk/2017/12/08/asteroid-2017-vl2-zoomed-terrifyingly-close-earth-nasa-didnt-see-coming-7144051/

Jasper Hamill Friday 8 Dec 2017

Asteroid 2017 VL2 is the size of a whale, which means it’s large enough to wipe out a major city.

It measures between six and 32 metres wide and came within 73,000 miles of the surface of Earth.

This is just one-third of the distance between our planet and the moon.

It passed by on November 9 and was only observed on November 10.

If it hit Earth, the asteroid would wipe out anything within a radius of about 4 miles.

Luckily, it won’t come back our way until 2125.

Planet Earth will have another terrifyingly close encounter with a three-mile-wide asteroid just over a week before Christmas.

Planet Earth will have another terrifyingly close encounter with a three-mile-wide asteroid just over a week before Christmas.

A gigantic space rock called 3200 Phaethon is due to brush ‘quite close’ to our planet on December 17, Russian astronomers have revealed.

This huge asteroid is thought to cause the beautiful Geminids meteor shower which will take place between December 13 and 14, causing hundreds of bright meteors to illuminate the night sky as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

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