is a sub-kilometer

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

, classified as

near-Earth object A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. By convention, a Solar System body is a NEO if its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). ...

and

potentially hazardous asteroid A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is a near-Earth object – either an asteroid or a comet – with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and is large enough to cause significant regional damage in the event of impact. They are ...

of the

Apollo group Apollo Education Group, Inc. is an American corporation based in the South Phoenix area of Phoenix, Arizona, with an additional corporate office in Chicago, Illinois. The company owns and operates several higher-learning institutions, including ...

that passed at a nominal distance of from the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

and from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

on 7 January 2002. The

measures approximately 300

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...

s in diameter; insignificant enough in size to be only discovered later that year on 26 December 2002 by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) was a program run by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Astronomical survey, surveying the sky for near-Earth objects. NEAT was conducted from December 1995 until April 2007, at Ground-based Electro-Optica ...

program (

NEAT Neat may refer to: * Neat (bartending), a single, unmixed liquor served in a rocks glass * Neat, an old term for horned oxen * Neat Records, a British record label * Neuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT), a genetic algorithm (GA) for t ...

).Huge Asteroid Narrowly Misses Earth
/ref> The nearest proximity it has reached Earth by was 830,000 kilometres which is approximately twice the distance to the

. Based on limited observations, the asteroid may have a 2.5 hour

rotation period The rotation period of a celestial object (e.g., star, gas giant, planet, moon, asteroid) may refer to its sidereal rotation period, i.e. the time that the object takes to complete a single revolution around its axis of rotation relative to the ...

and a

Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance Minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) is a measure used in astronomy to assess potential close approaches and collision risks between astronomical objects. It is defined as the distance between the closest points of the osculating orbits o ...

(MOID) from the Earth of . The findings of

David Morrison Lieutenant General David Lindsay Morrison (born 24 May 1956) is a retired senior officer of the Australian Army. He served as Chief of Army from June 2011 until his retirement in May 2015. He was named Australian of the Year for 2016. Early ...

of the

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

claim that although YB5-sized objects in space commonly fly and orbit the Earth's proximity at such close distances annually, there are no indications of a YB5 collision on Earth as their predicted impact spans from about once every 20,000 to 30,000 years.

References

External links

* * * # Minor planet object articles (unnumbered) # 20011217 {{NE-asteroid-stub