Small Truck-Sized Asteroid Safely Passes between Earth and Moon

A small asteroid named 2013 LR6 passed the Earth four times last Saturday as it took a path between the Earth and moon, reports HNGN.

The 30-foot-wide asteroid was discovered a day before its closest approach to Earth. On June 8, the asteroid 2012 LR6 zipped about 65,000 miles above the Earth's surface at 12:42 a.m. EDT. During its closest approach, the asteroid was above the Southern Ocean, south of Tasmania.

The asteroid, which was around the size of a small truck, was spotted June 6 by NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey. The live broadcast of the asteroid was available on Google+webcast. The webcast was possible by Virtual Telescope Project.

The asteroid 2013 LR6 was half the size of the asteroid that exploded over the city Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring more than 1,500. It was quite small, not big enough to cause a serious threat. In fact, due to its small size, scientists found it difficult to trace it. And even if it collided with the Earth, it would not have caused any serious damage due to its size.

When the bigger asteroid exploded over Russia in February 2013, there was one more unknown asteroid that passed at a distance of 17,200 miles from Earth, closer than the channels of communication satellites that circle the planet.

"There is theoretically a collision possible between asteroids and planet Earth," said astronomer Gianluca Masi, with the Virtual Telescope project, during a Google+ webcast that showed live images of the approaching asteroid.

The Goldstone array that is used to observe near-Earth asteroids also failed to spot the asteroid 2013 LR6, possibly due to time scarcity, says Lance Benner, the principal investigator for radar observations at the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif.

"It will go through so quickly that we aren't going to do it with radar," he said before the event, according to The Los Angeles Times.