If you're reading this, it means that Earth wasn't destroyed. On Feb. 9, the asteroid 2018 CB passed overhead with just 39,000 miles to spare—well within the moon's orbit and, by outer space standards, way too close for comfort. The pocket protector-toting space nerds at NASA call the asteroid a near-Earth object, which is defined as any object that passes through our solar system at less than 1.3 astronomical units (about 120 million miles) from the sun.
Imported from the CTE archive to seed discussion on MFGAxis.
Originally published on CTE: 2018-02-12
CTE source: https://ctemag.com/news/near-earth-objects/
Legacy path: /near-earth-objects