Tesla-sized asteroid just made closest-to-Earth flyby ever

No one saw the little asteroid 2020QG coming, but it was whipped by our planet as close as anything we’ve ever seen that could go on.

According to NASA’s Near Earth Objects Database, the car-sized space rock flew about 4,778 miles from the center of our planet. This means that it could have been less than 1,000 miles above our heads at its closest point, lower in altitude than almost any man-made satellite in orbit.

It currently has space for the closest close-up in the database, which dates back a century.

Now on to the kicker – 2020 QG, which also carried the identifier ZTF0DxQ before obtaining an official catalog entry, was only spotted by an observatory for a few hours. after the time of the closest approach Sunday.

While this may sound baffling, there is nothing to worry about as this asteroid probably did not pose a threat even though it had crashed into Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA estimates that 2020 HQ is around 10 to 20 feet in diameter. It’s about the size of a Tesla Model 3, which makes you wonder for a second if the car Elon Musk launched to Mars could have activated its autonomous boosters and attempted to get home.

If a Tesla, or just about anything else of that size, collided with Earth, it would likely burn out meeting the serious resistance provided by our atmosphere.

A few years ago, a comparably sized asteroid dubbed 2018 LA was spotted before it made an impact on Earth. It is believed that only the smallest pieces made it to the ground in Africa, causing no damage or injury.

In some context, the fireball that surprised the world when it exploded in the skies over Russia in 2013, blowing up thousands of windows below, was probably at least ten times the size of 2020QG.

This asteroid has also avoided early detection, but the good news is that astronomers and automated sky surveys are getting better at scanning the skies for incoming threats.

We still have blind spots, however, particularly in the southern hemisphere, where it looks like this asteroid has made its close flyby.