Asteroid 2018 VP1 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 419 200 km (1.09 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 0.28% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun), slightly after 3.30 am GMT on Tuesday 27 October 2020. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though were it to do so it would not have presented a significant threat. 2018 VP1 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 1-4 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 1-4 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) more than 42 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.
2018 VP1 was discovered on 3 November 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory. The designation 2018 VP1 implies that the asteroid was the 39th object (asteroid P1 - 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 P1 = (24 x 1) + 15 = 39) discovered in the first half of November 2018 (period 2018 V - the year being split into 24 half-months represented by the letters A-Y, with I being excluded).
2018 VP1 has a 731 day (2.00 year) orbital period, with an elliptical orbit tilted at an angle of 3.24° to the plain of the Solar System which takes in to 0.91 AU from the Sun (91% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) and out to 2.27 AU (2.27% of the distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, and outside the orbit of 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). 2018 VP1 has had several previous encounters with the Earth, with the most recent having occurredin November 2018, though no future such close encounters are predicted. The asteroid is also calculated to have come close to the planet Mars in May 2004, although again no further such encounters are predicted.
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