The Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), form Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that an asteroid named as 2018VP1, is predicted to pass near Earth one day prior to the US presidential election on 2nd November.
The asteroid was first identified at Palomar Observatory in California in 2018. is not considered a “potentially hazardous object” due to its small size – with a diameter of 0.002 km (about 6.5 feet), according to Nasa data.
The space agency said that there are three possible impacts, “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days”, it did not think a direct impact was likely.
Nasa stated that, “Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approximately 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth. If it were to enter our planet’s atmosphere, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.”
“NASA has been directed by Congress to discover 90% of the near-Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters (459 feet) in size and reports on asteroids of any size,” Nasa added.
Giving a breath of assurance, Nasa said that the chance of it hitting us is just 0.41%, data show.
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