{"id":94210,"date":"2019-07-29T03:42:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T10:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-huge-asteroid-flew-very-close-to-earth-last-week-how-did-we-miss-it"},"modified":"2019-07-29T03:42:26","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T10:42:26","slug":"a-huge-asteroid-flew-very-close-to-earth-last-week-how-did-we-miss-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/a-huge-asteroid-flew-very-close-to-earth-last-week-how-did-we-miss-it","title":{"rendered":"A huge asteroid flew very close to Earth last week. How did we miss it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-huge-asteroid-flew-very-close-to-earth-last-week-how-did-we-miss-it.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The asteroid managed to get within just 73,000 kilometers of our planet without anyone noticing. The miss lends a new sense of urgency to preparations for a potential collision one day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The news:<\/strong> On Thursday July 25 an asteroid dubbed \u201cAsteroid 2019 OK\u201d, measuring 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), got uncomfortably close to Earth, according to NASA\u2019s <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/cneos.jpl.nasa.gov\/ca\/\">near-Earth objects database<\/a>. It was less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon away, making it a very close call in space terms. If it had landed on a populated area it could have caused major damage, although this outcome is statistically quite unlikely.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Should we worry?<\/strong> It\u2019s hard not to feel concerned that a \u201ccity-killer\u201d sized asteroid wasn\u2019t detected further ahead of time. It was announced just hours before it passed by Earth, after being detected just a few days beforehand by teams in the US and Brazil. Its relatively small size, unusual orbit, and fast speed all conspired to make it tough to spot, researchers told the <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2019\/07\/26\/it-snuck-up-us-city-killer-asteroid-just-missed-earth-scientists-almost-didnt-detect-it-time\/\">Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The asteroid managed to get within just 73,000 kilometers of our planet without anyone noticing. The miss lends a new sense of urgency to preparations for a potential collision one day. The news: On Thursday July 25 an asteroid dubbed \u201cAsteroid 2019 OK\u201d, measuring 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), got uncomfortably [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}