From the article on Spaceweather.com:
"On Jan. 8th, asteroid 2019 AS5 flew past Earth only 8600 km above our planet's surface. Nine hours after the flyby, it was discovered by the the Mt. Lemmon Survey telescope in Arizona. The asteroid was closer to our planet than many satellites. If the 1 to 2 meter-wide space rock had hit Earth (and it almost did) it would have caused a brilliant fireball in the atmosphere with sonic booms and scattered meteorites on the ground--but no serious damage."
I find it interesting the asteroid was only discovered after it had already flown past us. It really makes sense though since it was so small as far as asteroids go. It's close encounter with Earth significantly changed it's orbit, much like many of our space probes do intentionally to gain speed/change trajectory. There is a pretty cool interactive 3-D map of the encounter here.
"On Jan. 8th, asteroid 2019 AS5 flew past Earth only 8600 km above our planet's surface. Nine hours after the flyby, it was discovered by the the Mt. Lemmon Survey telescope in Arizona. The asteroid was closer to our planet than many satellites. If the 1 to 2 meter-wide space rock had hit Earth (and it almost did) it would have caused a brilliant fireball in the atmosphere with sonic booms and scattered meteorites on the ground--but no serious damage."
I find it interesting the asteroid was only discovered after it had already flown past us. It really makes sense though since it was so small as far as asteroids go. It's close encounter with Earth significantly changed it's orbit, much like many of our space probes do intentionally to gain speed/change trajectory. There is a pretty cool interactive 3-D map of the encounter here.
