Asteroid Watch: 95-Foot Space Rock Skimmed Earth Closer Than Moon Yesterday

Earth just had another close call with an asteroid after one flew past the planet yesterday. According to data obtained by NASA, the asteroid flew closer than the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has been observing the asteroid, dubbed as 2019 KT, since May 26. According to the data gathered by the agency, 2019 KT was moving at a speed of around 26,000 miles per hour when it zipped past Earth on May 28 at 3:48 UTC.

The asteroid flew past Earth with a distance of only 0.00217 astronomical units. To put that into perspective, one astronomical unit is approximately equivalent to 93 million miles, which is also the distance between the Earth and the Moon. This means 2019 KT flew with a distance of about 201,700 miles from Earth, which is about 85 percent of the space between the planet and the Moon.

Despite having such a close call with an asteroid, NASA assured the public that 2019 KT did not pose any threat to Earth due to certain factors such as its distance from the planet as well as its size. According to the space agency, the diameter of the asteroid ranged between 42.6 to 95 feet.

“If you represented Earth by a basketball in a scale model, the Moon would be the size of a tennis ball and about 21 feet away – the distance between the two posts of a professional soccer goal,” NASA said in a statement according to Express. “At this scale, a 100 meter-wide asteroid would be much smaller than a grain of sand, even smaller than a speck of dust.”

2019 KT’s recent appearance near Earth can be considered historical since it was the first time the asteroid flew close to the planet in more than a century. Before yesterday’s events, the last time it flew by Earth was on April 24, 1965. During this time, the asteroid approached Earth with a distance of 29 million miles.

The asteroid will not approach Earth in the near future but it is expected to pass by Jupiter in April 2025.