Truck-sized asteroid swept within 2,000 miles on Sunday
Posted by Deborah Byrd in SPACE | August 19, 2020

Asteroid ZTF0DxQ – now officially labeled 2020 QG – now holds the record for the closest flyby of Earth. It swept just 2,000 miles (3,000 km) from Earth’s surface, or about a quarter of the diameter of Earth itself.


The blue ball in the lower left of this image represents Earth. The curved green arrow represents asteroid 2020 QG, whose orbit was changed by its near-Earth encounter on Sunday. The tick marks on the green line represent 30-minute intervals. You can see that this asteroid was really zooming past! Image via Minor Planet Center.
Newly discovered asteroid ZTF0DxQ – now officially labeled 2020 QG – swept about 1,830 miles (2,900 km) from Earth’s surface on Sunday, August 16, 2020, then zoomed on. It was moving at a speed of about 7.7 miles per second (12.4 km per second) or about 27,600 mph. Because it approached Earth from a sunward direction, it flew past us unseen at 04:08 UTC. Astronomers didn’t detect it until six hours later. This object now holds the record among known asteroids for having swept closest to us without striking us.

Should we be glad it didn’t hit us, or mad it wasn’t detected earlier? Neither one.

And here’s why: relatively speaking, this object is very, very small.