Asteroid news: 'Very close encounter' - Small asteroid just came as close as the Moon

The asteroid, officially nicknamed 2020 MP1, safely swung past our planet after 3am BST (10pm EDT) on Thursday, June 25. According to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS),

Asteroid MP1 came within 1.19 lunar distances (LD) of the planet - about 283,515.21 miles. Astronomer Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy dubbed the flyby a close but

safe brush with the space rock.

Dr Masi said: "A few hours ago, the near-Earth asteroid 2020 MP1 safely approached our planet, reaching a minimum distance from the Earth of about 460,000km, 1.2 times the average distance

of the Moon."

As the asteroid flew by, Dr Masi managed to snap a clear picture of MP1 against the starlit sky.

The Virtual Telescope tweeted: "The near-Earth #asteroid asteroid #2020MP1 had a safe very close encounter with our planet a few hours ago: the Virtual Telescope promptly imaged it!

#AsteroidDay."

The asteroid photo features a bright dot of light against streaky star trails.

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The image is the result of a single 120-second-long exposure, taken with a 17-inch telescope.

Dr Masi said: "The telescope tracked the fast apparent motion of the asteroid, this is why stars show as long trails, while the asteroid looks like a bright and sharp dot of light in the

centre of the image, marked by an arrow.

"At the imaging time, asteroid 2020 MP1 was at about 463,000km from the Earth and it was still safely approaching us.

Asteroid MP1 belongs to a family of so-called near-Earth objects or NEOs that frequently visit our corner of space.

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The near-Earth asteroid 2020 MP1 safely approached our planet

According to NASA, dozens of NEOs zip by every month within a distance of about 0.05 astronomical units (au) of Earth - that is more than 4.64 million miles.

However, NASA's asteroid trackers list the flybys as "close approaches" and chart out their trajectories up to 200 years into the future.

All of the asteroids listed by NASA's database have already been deemed safe.

NASA said: "As they orbit the Sun, NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth.

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"Note that a 'close' passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres."

Asteroid MP1 is a relatively small NEO, only measuring between 55ft and 121ft (17m and 37m) across.

At no point in its flyby, did the space rock pose any threat to Earth.

The asteroid is flying through space at speeds of about 7.85 km per second or 17,559mph (28,260kph).

After today's flyby, the asteroid is not expected to visit Earth again.

NASA said: “Because of the ongoing search efforts to find nearly all the large NEOs, objects will occasionally be found to be on very close Earth approaching trajectories.

“Great care must then be taken to verify any Earth collision predictions that are made.

“Given the extremely unlikely nature of such a collision, almost all of these predictions will turn out to be false alarms.

“However, if an object is verified to be on an Earth colliding trajectory, it seems likely that this collision possibility will be known several years prior to the actual event.”

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