Asteroid 2020 FC2 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 766 500
km (2.00 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or
0.51% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly after 5.10 pm
GMT on Monday 16 March 2020. There was no danger of
the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have
presented a significant threat. 2020 FC2 has an estimated
equivalent
diameter of 5-15 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object
with
the same volume would be 5-15 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 between 40 and 26 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material
reaching the Earth's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2020 FC2. JPL Small Body Database.
2020 FC2 was
discovered on 17 March 2020 (the day after its closest approach to the
Earth) by the Japan Space Agency's Janess-G 0.25 m telescope at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. The
designation 2020 FC2 implies that it was the 54th asteroid (asteroid C2 -
in numbering asteroids the letters A-Y, excluding I, are assigned
numbers from 1 to 24, with a number added to the end each time the
alphabet is ended, so that A = 1, A1 = 25, A2 = 49, etc., which means that C2 = 6 + (24 X 2) = 54)
discovered in the second half of March 2020 (period 2020 F).
2020 FC2 has a 771 day (2.11 year) orbital period, with an elliptical
orbit tilted at
an angle of 6.82° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to
0.98 AU from the Sun (98% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the
Sun) and out to 2.30 AU (230% of the distance at which the Earth orbits
the sun and further from the Sun than the planet Mars). 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).
See also...
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