New asteroid made close-approach less than 5,000 miles from Earth's surface

New asteroid made close-approach less than 5,000 miles from Earth's surface
reported by  meteordetective

NASA have published data of a very close-approach which occurred on Feb-25 at 19:49Z (note that the asteroid was not discovered until the following day).

The asteroid in question is 2016 DY30 (the 774th <0.5 AU asteroid to be discovered since March 01 2016).

Its nominal (expected) close-approach distance was just 4933.546 miles from Earth's surface.  Although small (estimated to be 2-5m in diameter), it was travelling at just over 17km/s (relative to Earth) at the time of its close-approach.

2016 DY30 entered NASA's all-time close-approaches table at position #5.  It is the 6th asteroid, this year, which has found its way on to the 'top 100' table. There were 13 new entries in this 'top 100' table last year (2015) and 12 entries during 2014.

8 asteroids have made / will make their close-approach of less than 1LD (average distance from Earth to the Moon) during the current +/- 30 days period.  2016 DY30 was the only one of these which was (well) below geo-stationary altitude of 22,236 miles.

Watch the skies...

2016 The THIRD Year of "CERTAIN Uncertainty" ™ / Meteors, Asteroids, Comets, and MORE!!