Asteroid 2014 KQ84 passed by the Earth at a distance of 3 309 000 km (8.61 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), slightly before 8.45 am GMT on Thursday 5 June 2013. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though had it done son it would have presented no threat. 2014 KQ84 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 8-27 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 8-27 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to break up in the atmosphere between 36 and 15 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2014 KQ84. JPL Small Body Database Browser.
2014 KQ84 was discovered on 30 May 2014 (six days before its closest approach to the Earth) by the University of Arizona's Mt. Lemmon Survey at the Steward Observatory on Mount Lemmon in the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.. The designation 2014 KQ84 implies that it was the 2217th asteroid (asteroid Q84) discovered in the second half of May 2014 (period 2014 K).
While 2014 KQ84 occasionally comes near to the Earth, it does not actually cross our orbital path. It has an elliptical 607 day orbit, that takes it from 1.04 AU from the Sun (1.04 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun), slightly outside our orbit, to 1.77 AU from the Sun, (1.77 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, slightly more than the distance at which the planet Mars orbits the Sun). As a Near Earth Object that remains strictly outside the orbit of the Earth it is classed as an Amor Family Asteroid.
See also...
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