Asteroid 2014 MP passed by the Earth at a distance of 3 483 000 km (9.05 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), slightly before 5.40 am GMT on Sunday 22 June 2013. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though had it done so it would have presented no threat. 2014 MP has an estimated equivalent diameter of 12-38 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 12-38 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to break up in the atmosphere between 30 and 12 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2014 MP. JPL Small Body Database Browser.
2014 MP was discovered on 18 June 2014 (four 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 MP implies that it was the 16th asteroid (asteroid P) discovered in the second half of June 2014 (period 2014 M).
While 2014 MP occasionally comes near to the Earth, it does not actually cross our orbital path. It has an elliptical 392 day orbit, that takes it from 1.02 AU from the Sun (1.02 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun), slightly outside our orbit, to 1.08 AU from the Sun, (1.08 times the distance at which the Earth 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. This means that close encounters between the asteroid and Earth are fairly common, with the last thought to have happened in January 2014 and the next predicted in July 2015.
See also...
Asteroid 2014 MX passed by the Earth at a distance of about 6 265 000 km (16.13 times the average distance between the Earth and the...
Asteroid 2014 KC46 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 4 331 000 km (11.26 times the average distance between the Earth and the...
Asteroid 2014 HQ124 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 1 251 000 km (3.25 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), slightly before 6.00 am GMT on Sunday 8 June 2014. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do...
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