Sorry but NASA says this little asteroid does not pose a threat to Earth until election day

Headlines abound this week about an asteroid heading towards Earth at perhaps the most opportune time of this terrible year: November 2, the eve of the presidential election. It sounds too good to be true – an asteroid to wipe us out all before what will surely be a highly controversial electoral process – and that’s because it is.

This supposedly “dangerous” asteroid, dubbed 2018VP1, has a 0.41% chance of crossing paths with Earth on November 2 and entering our atmosphere – an incredibly low chance. And even if it took a turn and hit us, no one would be in danger. The asteroid is 2 meters in diameter, making it slightly smaller than a compact smart car. If it did reach our atmosphere it would completely disintegrate above us and pose no threat to anyone below. For reference, much larger satellites and space junk from time to time enter our atmosphere, burning above us without affecting anyone on the ground.

I understand that we are in 2020, the year of incredibly bad luck, so it would be very poetic for an asteroid to threaten Earth before Election Day. But the point is, asteroids hiss near Earth all the time, sometimes getting closer to us and sometimes not.

In fact, another small asteroid measuring between 10 and 20 feet in diameter made the closest-to-Earth approach ever recorded by a known near-Earth asteroid on August 16, within 1,830 miles or 2,950 kilometers. It was also small enough that it would have burned itself in the atmosphere if it had successfully crossed paths with Earth, but astronomers only spotted it six hours after it passed. NASA notes that it is difficult to detect asteroids this small because they move quickly, and there is only a short window to spot them as they get closer to Earth.

Rest assured that NASA is committed to spotting and tracking the asteroids that make pose potential threats to our planet. NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), located at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, aims to catalog more than 90% of all asteroids closer to Earth more than a kilometer away. – or two-thirds of a mile. – through, as well as the discovery of a significant fraction of asteroids over 140 meters, or about 460 feet wide. The Center uses a wide array of ground-based telescopes to track these objects, and it maintains an extensive catalog of everything that should pass through Earth.