Asteroid 2019 SC is an Apollo-type rock on a trajectory similar to Asteroid 1862 Apollo. NASA has ranked it as an NEO or Near-Earth Object, as it whizzed past the Earth while being as close as the Moon. NEOs are the usual name for all comets and asteroids that come close to Earth on their orbits of the inner solar system. The European Space Agency (ESA) estimates there are currently 20,756 known NEOs in the system. Out of these objects, 877 have made it onto ESA’s NEO Risk List.
NASA estimates the rock measures somewhere in the range of 29.2ft to 65.6ft (8.9 m to 20m) across – too small to be considered a real danger. The asteroid missed our planet from a safe distance on Thursday, giving the Earth a wide berth of around 0.00360 au.
An incident like this took place in 2013, when a 65.6ft-wide (20m) entered the skies above Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast. The space rock exploded mid-flight, blowing out windows in a wide radius and injuring people with glass shards.
