An asteroid is coming menacingly close to Earth

A newly discovered space rock 2 meters (6.5 feet) across passed through Earth Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites are five times as far away as their orbits.

The small asteroid, dubbed “C9FMVU2”, was spotted last Thursday just hours before it made its first close approach to Earth.

The space rock passed within 4,000 km (2,500 miles) of our planet, or about 1% of the distance between Earth and the Moon, which may seem alarming considering GPS satellites orbit at an altitude of: 20,200 km (12,550 miles).

And in a post on the European Space Agency (ESA) “X” website (formerly Twitter), the asteroid posed no danger to Earth because it was so small that if the asteroid had hit the planet, it would have burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a ball. Spectacular fireworks and some small fragments may have reached the Earth’s surface. .

Richard Moisel, head of the European Space Agency’s Planetary Protection Division, said the asteroid’s trajectory could be drastically altered by Earth’s gravitational pull.

So far, astronomers have discovered more than 30,000 near-Earth asteroids, which are space rocks that pass through space near Earth’s orbit. Of those rocks, only about 2,300 are considered dangerous, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

However, even very small asteroids can cause widespread devastation if they hit the planet, just as the 20-meter (65-foot) Chelyabinsk asteroid that exploded in the sky over southern Russia in 2013 scattered shock waves. About 1,400 people were injured by thousands of windows and pieces of flying glass.