The Drudge Report wasted no time yesterday in spreading a minor panic, slapping up a headline that made it appear Earth was in imminent danger from a “mysterious object” careening towards our planet. Well, reality is slightly different and far more boring.
The mystery object is a tiny asteroid dubbed AL30. It’s only 33-feet-wide and will miss Earth by 80,000 miles, which is pretty damn close by any measure. However, this rock is so small it would explode in the atmosphere, unable to cause any damage on the ground.
A Nasa spokesman said the asteroid did not pose a risk with stony asteroids under 25 meters in diameter more likely to “burn up in our atmosphere, causing little or no ground damage”.
He also dismissed claims it was a man-made object.
“Because its orbital period is nearly identical to the Earth’s one year period, some have suggested it may be a manmade rocket stage in orbit about the sun,” he said.
“However, this object’s orbit reaches the orbit of Venus at its closest point to the sun and nearly out to the orbit of Mars at its furthest point, crossing the Earth’s orbit at a very steep angle. This makes it very unlikely that 2010 AL30 is a rocket stage.
“Furthermore, trajectory extrapolations show that this object cannot be associated with any recent launch and it has not made any close approaches to the Earth since well before the Space Age began.”
