Asteroid
2016 GO134 passed by the Earth at a distance of 332 000 km (0.86 times
the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 0.22% of
the average distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly before 7.35 pm GMT on Friday 6 April 2016. There was no
danger
of the asteroid
hitting us, though had it done so it would have presented no
threat. 2016 GO134 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 5-18 m (i.e.
it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 5-18 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to
explode in an airburst (an explosion caused by superheating from
friction with the Earth's atmosphere, which is greater than that caused
by simply falling, due to the orbital momentum of the asteroid) in the
atmosphere btween 40 and 24 km above the ground, with only fragmentary
material reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2016 GO134. JPL Small Body Database.
2016 GO134 was discovered on 6 April 2016 (the day of 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
2016 GO134 implies that the asteroid was the 3364th object (object O134)
discovered in the first half of April 2016 (period 2016 G).
2016 GO134 has a 1371 day orbital period and an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 7.11° to the plane of the Solar System, that
takes it from 0.85 AU from the Sun (i.e. 85% of the average distance at
which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 3.99 AU from the Sun (i.e, 399% of
the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, considerably more than twice the
distance at which the planet Mars orbits the Sun). It is therefore
classed as an Apollo
Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than
the Earth, but which does get closer). This means that 2016 GO134 has occasional close encounters with the Earth, with the next predicted in August 2125, as well as with the planet Jupiter, with the next predicted in March 2131.
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