Asteroid 2014 KM22 passes by the Earth at a distance of 7 187 000 km (18.62 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon) slightly before 8.35 am GMT on Wednesday 28 May 2014. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, and had it done so it would have presented little threat. 2014 KM22 is calculated to have an equivalent diameter of 9-28 m (i.e. a spherical body with the same volume would be 9-28 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to break up in the Earth's atmosphere between 33 km and 17 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the planet's surface.
The calculated orbit of 2014 KM22. JPL Small Body Database Browser.
2014 KM22 was discovered on 20 May 2014 (eight days before its closest approach to the Earth) by the University of Hawaii's PANSTARRS telescope on Mount Haleakala. The designation 2014 KM22 implies that it was the 563rd asteroid (asteroid M22) discovered in the second half of May 2014 (period 2014 K).
While 2014 KM22 occasionally comes near to the Earth, it does not actually cross our orbital path. It has an elliptical 1031 day orbit, that takes it from 1.06 AU from the Sun (1.06 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun), slightly outside our orbit, to 2.15 AU from the Sun, (2.15 times the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, considerably 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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Faye's Comet reaches its perihelion.
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