On the night of January 29, 2017, a small asteroid, narrowly missed colliding with the Earth.
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This asteroid, 2017 BH30, was the size of a pickup truck and at 0459 GMT on January 30, 2017 (2359 EST on January 29, 2017), it came the closest to Earth, said astronomers from the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
It passed by Earth at a distance of 51,820 kilometres (32,200 miles) — equal to 13% of the distance between the Earth and the moon.
This space rock is 5.8 metres (19 feet) wide, according to researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
This asteroid was spotted by scientists on January 29, at the Catalina Sky Survey, located in Tucson, Arizona. This space rock's orbit is more elliptical than the Earth's and it takes around 3.8 years to complete one revolution around the sun.
As revealed by the Minor Planet Center, the asteroid gets as close as 0.81 AU to the sun and goes as far as 3.4 AU, space.com reported.
According to researchers, asteroids of this size cause no significant danger to Earth.
This asteroid is small compared to 2017 BH30, the object that came down just outside the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, wounding more than a thousand people, in February 2013, which was estimated to be 20 metres (65 feet) wide.
In order to cause severe devastation on Earth, the asteroid should be at least a kilometre (0.6 miles) in diameter.
On January 7, scientists discovered an asteroid, 2017 AG13. It passed close to Earth on January 9, 2017 at around 192,500 kilometers (119,500 miles), according to an IBTimes report.
That asteroid was estimated to be as wide as 34 meters (111 feet), according to astronomers at the Minor Planet Center.
What's common, and scary, about these asteroids is that they are spotted only a short period before they pass by Earth.
