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?

[backbyter]

Apparently there's *much* more stuff to know before guestimating.

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

Re:How Much Damage?

[bitt3n]

Would it penetrate through to basement depth? If not most people here wouldn't notice till the next meal didn't show up.

that happened to me once. I ordered a pizza from the local Dominoes, but they'd been hit by an asteroid and the building collapsed. So I called the next closest one, but it turned out that every other Dominoes in the country had been sequentially knocked out of commission by that single event. Pretty stupid way to run a business if you ask me.