Asteroid could hit Earth one day before the US presidential elections

The year 2020 never ceases to surprise us.

Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, NASA has announced there are slim chances our planet may be hit by an asteroid, and it could happen one day before the US presidential elections no less.

The asteroid, which is projected to come close to Earth later this year, has a 0.41 per cent chance of hitting the planet according to NASA data.

The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the celestial object, known as 2018VP1, is predicted to pass near Earth one day before the US presidential election on Nov.2.

The space agency said there were three potential impacts but, “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days,” it did not think a direct impact was likely and even if it hit, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.

2018VP1, which was first identified at Palomar Observatory, California, in 2018, is not considered a “potentially hazardous object” due to its small size — with a diameter of 0.002 kilometre (about 6.5 feet), according to Nasa data.

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Potentially hazardous objects — usually asteroids or comets — are those which have an orbit taking them close to Earth and are large enough to cause significant regional damage if they ever hit the planet.

Earlier this month, an asteroid flew just 2,941km over the southern Indian Ocean — the closest such an object has flown past Earth on record.

The object, known as asteroid 2020 GC, was spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a robotic camera which scans the sky, and is thought to be roughly the size of a large car.

Its small size meant asteroid 2020 GC did not pose much of a threat to Earth as it would have likely broken up in the planet’s atmosphere if it was on course for direct impact.

“It’s really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth’s gravity dramatically bend its trajectory,” Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS, said of the discovery.

“Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet."