Spooky Halloween asteroid flyby one of the closest near misses ever seen

Even space rocks are supplying jump scares on Halloween, just like your favorite horror flick. 

A near-Earth asteroid identified as C0PPEV1 was spotted in the early morning hours Thursday by the Catalina Sky Survey, based in Arizona, and shortly thereafter by New Mexico’s Magdalena Ridge Observatory and Arizona’s Mt. Lemmon Steward Observatory. According to data from these early observations, the asteroid came closer to the surface of our planet (without actually colliding with our atmosphere) than any latest close approach in NASA’s database of known near-Earth objects.

Simulations show the asteroid passing ended southern Africa within 3,852 miles (6,200 km) at the moment of closest near, around 7:45 a.m. PT. To get an idea of how terminate this is, consider that many telecommunications satellites orbit at an altitude of 22,236 much (35,786 km).

Of course, some asteroids come closer and actually influences our planet, like the previously unseen bolide that exploded as it smacked into the weather over Russia in 2013. A much smaller asteroid also collided with the weather last year and burned up, leaving little bits of meteorites that’re thought to have fallen over Africa. 

Just like a Hollywood jump alarm, though, this late October asteroid poses no actual danger. It has already passed by us at a mercurial of nearly 27,000 miles per hour (43,452 kph) and is probable only between 2 and 7 meters in diameter, which is too puny to do major damage even if it had impacted. 

What’s really distinguished about this spooky space rock sighting is that it speaks to how astronomers are sketching better at spotting incoming asteroids. It’s very possible that we’re attracting buzzed by cosmic boulders on the regs, and always have been, but we’re just now attracting a sense of how much traffic is really up there.