Asteroid 2019 NE2 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 11 405 000
km (29.7 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 7.62% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), at about 2.15 am
GMT on Thursday 11 July 2019. There was no danger of
the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would have
presented a significant threat. 2019 NE2 has an estimated
equivalent
diameter of 120-360 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object
with
the same volume would be 120-360 m in diameter), and an object of this
size 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 between about 1200 and 120 000 times as
powerful
as the
Hiroshima
bomb. Such an impact would result in an impact crater between 1.5 and 5
km
in
diameter
and devastation on a global scale, as well as climatic effects that
would last decades or even centuries.
The calculated orbit of 2019 NE2. JPL Small Body Database.
2019 NE2 was discovered on 4 July 2019 (seven days before its closest approach to the Earth) by the Atlas MLO Telescope at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. The designation 2019 NE2 implies that the asteroid was the 53rd object (object E2 -
in numbering asteroids the letters A-Z, excluding I, are assigned
numbers from 1 to 25, so that E2 = (24 x 2) + 5 = 53) discovered in the first half of July 2019 (period 2019 N).
2019 NE2
has an 831 day orbital period and an eccentric orbit
tilted at an angle of 8.48° to the plane of the Solar System, which
takes it from 0.47 AU from the Sun (i.e. 47% of he average distance at
which the Earth orbits the Sun, inside the orbit of the planet Venus) to 2.99 AU from the Sun (i.e. 2.99% of
the
average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, which is
almost twice the distance at which the planet Mars
orbits). 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 close
encounters between the asteroid and Earth are extremely common, with the
last having occurred in February 2006 and the next predicted
in January 2022. As an asteroid probably larger than 150 m in diameter
that occasionally comes within 0.05 AU of the Earth, 2019 NE2 is also
classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid. 201NE2 also has
occasional close encounters with the planet Jupiter, with the last having
occurred in March 2008, and the next predicted for December 2021.
See also...
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