An asteroid flew past Earth on Monday closer than the distance to the moon after only being detected by scientists last week.
The hurtling space rock, dubbed 2024 CY1, is the size of a double decker bus and potentially weighs 100s of tonnes. Astronomers said it was the third asteroid to pass within one lunar distance of our planet this month.
A lunar distance, how far the Earth is from the moon, is around 238,855 miles but this celestial body made it within 75,278 miles of the planet.
Luckily, because of the size of 2024 CY1 it’s likely the rock would have been burned up by the Earth’s protective atmosphere meaning it would not pose a threat to us on the surface.
According to Space.com: “Astronomers spotted the asteroid using the Pan-STARRS 2 telescope located near the summit of Haleakala on the Island of Maui, Hawaii.
“It is the 10th known asteroid to fly past Earth within 1 lunar distance in 2024 so far, and the third this month.”
Space monitoring website, the Virtual Telescope Project, said the asteroid was around 27.5 feet in diameter.
The Pan-STARRS 2 (which stands for Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) telescope monitors near-Earth objects, those within 120 million miles of the sun, which be a threat to us.
Asteroids have historically caused apocalyptic damage to the life on Earth, with the main theory behind the destruction of the dinosaurs being asteroid impact.
In recent history in 1908 the Tunguska event saw an asteroid strike set off an explosion that was the equivalent of three to five megaton nuclear explosion.
Luckily, the impact happened in sparsely populated Siberia but the explosion is said to have flattened around 80 million trees. As the world becomes more populated the risk of human casualties as a result of an asteroid strike increases.
