A five-metre object 2019 MO was detected by the University of Hawaii’s ATLAS telescope. The sighting occurred while it was 310,000 miles away from Earth. The spotting has been hailed as a significant sign of the sophistication in planetary defence systems.
As reported by Metro.co.uk, Davide Farnocchia, who works as a scientist for the NASA Centre for Near Earth Object Studies said: “Asteroids this size are far smaller than what we’re tasked to track.
“They’re so small, they would not survive passing through our atmosphere to cause damage to Earth’s surface. But this event shows how capable our search programs are, even for objects of such small sizes.”
If the asteroid was larger, it would have the potential to cause serious damage if it passed through the atmosphere at a hurtling speed.
Instead, it just caused a flash over the Caribbean Sea on June 22.
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Scientists are yet to develop ways of deflecting objects that threaten to hit Earth despite being able to detect these rather small examples from a huge distance.
NASA had earlier this year confirmed they will be building the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) which will in 2022 be tested to see if it can hit a small moonlet in the asteroid system Didymos.
Asteroids in the system pose no threat to Earth.
The aim is for impact to knock objects of course and away from causing harm on Earth.
The closest the moonlet has come to Earth is 7.18million kilometres (4.5million miles) back in November 2003.
It is expected to come within a shorter 5.9million km (3.7million miles) but not until November 2123.
In 1998, astronomers were fearful that an asteroid was on a collision course with our planet but further observations resulted in the warning being withdrawn.
The asteroid, XF11, was a mile in diameter and was predicted to hit on October 26 2028.
