Asteroid’s near miss with Earth

IT may have felt like any other minute as the clock struck 5.14pm yesterday, but it is worth noting as you go about your business today that it was, in fact, the moment an asteroid the size of a tour bus passed the Earth.

The asteroid passed just over 12,000km above the Earth’s surface, NASA officials confirmed.

At that moment, 2011 MD sailed high off the coast of Antarctica, almost 3,218km south-southwest of South Africa.

Asteroid 2011 MD was discovered last Wednesday by LINEAR, a pair of robotic telescopes in New Mexico that scan the skies for near-Earth asteroids.

The best estimate suggests the asteroid was between 29 to 98ft wide. According to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an object of this size can be expected to come this close to Earth about every six years.

The asteroid’s flyby was a close shave, but not a record for passing asteroids. That record is currently held by the asteroid 2011 CQ1, which came within 5,471km of Earth on February 4 of this year.