Asteroid 2020 FM6 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 5 496 000
km (14.3 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 3.67% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), at about 4.35 am
GMT on Monday 27 April 2020. There was no danger of
the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would have
presented a considerable threat. 2020 FM6 has an estimated
equivalent
diameter of 78-250 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with
the same volume would be 78-250 m in diameter), and an object at the upper end of this range would be predicted to be capable of passing
through the Earth's
atmosphere relatively intact, impacting the ground directly with an
explosion that would be 35 000 times as powerful as the
Hiroshima
bomb. Such an impact would result in an impact crater almost 4 km in
diameter
and devastation on a global scale, as well as climatic effects that
would last decades or even centuries.
2020 FM6 was discovered on 25 March 2020 (over a month before its closest encounter with the Earth) by the University of Hawaii's PANSTARRS telescope. The
designation 2020 FM6 implies that it was the 156th asteroid (asteroid X4 -
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 M6 = 12 + (24 X 6) = 156)
discovered in the second half of March 2020 (period 2020 F).
2020 FM6 has a 582 day (1.59 year) orbital period, with an elliptical
orbit tilted at
an angle of 15.0° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to
0.69 AU from the Sun (69% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the
Sun, and slightly inside the orbit of the planet Venus) and out to 2.04 AU (204% of the distance at which the Earth orbits
the sun and further from the Sun than the planet Mars).
This means that close
encounters between the asteroid and Earth are fairly common, with the
last thought to have happened in November 2015 and the next predicted
in October 2023. 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). As
an asteroid probably larger than 150 m in diameter that occasionally
comes within 0.05 AU of the Earth, 2020 FM6 is also classified
as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. 2020 FM6 also has occassional close encounters with the planet Venus, with the last having happened in August 2004, and the next predicted for August 2039.
See also...
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