DOOMED _____ Asteroid to Whip Past Earth on June 27, 2011 Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above the Earth's surface on Monday June 27 at about 9:30 EDT. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico. The diagram on the left shows the trajectory of 2011 MD projected onto the Earth's orbital plane over a four-day interval. The diagram on the left gives another view from the general direction of the Sun that indicates that 2011 MD will reach its closest Earth approach point in extreme southern latitudes (in fact over the southern Atlantic Ocean). This small asteroid, only 5-20 meters in diameter, is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, but an orbital analysis indicates there is no chance it will actually strike Earth on Monday. The incoming trajectory leg passes several thousand kilometers outside the geosynchronous ring of satellites and the outgoing leg passes well inside the ring. One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average. For a brief time, it will be bright enough to be seen even with a modest-sized telescope. link
An asteroid that small wouldn't make it through the atmosphere anyway. The Tunguska meteorite is thought to have been about 60 meters and that broke up in the atmosphere.
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..hope they would discover near earth asteroids earlier. They discovered this one just 3-4 days before it actually flies by. What if the next one is the size of texas.
If it was bigger, it would have been easier to detect. If it was the size of Texas, it would practically be a planet (the width of Texas is one-quarter the diameter of Mercury).
