NANJING, CHINA — Earlier this month, a Chinese telescope captured images of an asteroid headed towards earth.
The asteroid, labeled as 2009ES by the Minor Planet Center, is one of 1,640 “minor bodies,” celestial bodies smaller than dwarf planets that are potentially on a collision course with earth.
The asteroid was recently observed by the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing. The observatory’s 1.2-meter Schmit telescope is the largest of its kind in Asia, according to the China Daily.
Luckily, the asteroid missed. 2009ES flew by within a range of 18.8 times of the distance between the earth and the moon, the the China Daily reported.
The asteroid missed, but it will pass by earth again four months from now as it returns to the outer solar system.
But should an asteroid of its size, around 10,000 meters, collide with earth, the impact would be the equivalent to that of three billion atomic bombs.
