Unknown 7m Asteroid Almost Impacted Earth

xp65 writes "A previously undiscovered asteroid came within 14,000 km of Earth — just over one Earth diameter, 1/30 the lunar distance — on Friday, and astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before closest approach. On Nov. 6 at around 16:30 EST, a 7-meter asteroid, now called 2009 VA, came only about 2 Earth radii from impacting our planet. This is the third-closest known non-impacting Earth approach on record for a cataloged asteroid. The asteroid was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey and was quickly identified by the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge MA as an object that would soon pass very close to the Earth. JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office also computed an orbit solution for this object, and determined that it was not headed for an impact." The article notes, "On average, objects the size of 2009 VA pass this close about twice per year and impact Earth about once every 5 years."

Comments

Re:How Much Damage?

[Joey Vegetables]

From Wikipedia:

An impact by an object in this size range [around 10m] would correspond to an impact energy roughly comparable to the Hiroshima bomb, if the object had hit the Earth's surface.

If it hit near the center of a large city it could really suck; however, most of the earth's surface is covered by water, desert, mountains, or rural areas, and thus most asteroid impacts of this size do not cause massive loss of life.