Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz– April 16, 2020
An asteroid the size of a house was discovered by NASA last week, which was just in time to announce its near-miss on Wednesday night. Asteroid 2020 GH2 is estimated to be 43 to 70 feet wide according to Space.com.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office assured Earth-dwellers that our planet was safe from destruction, tweeting a video that attempted to put a near-earth pass into perspective.
The video depicted the Earth as a basketball, the moon as a tennis ball 25 feet away, and the asteroid responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs as a grain of salt “a couple of blocks away.” But GH2 was not a couple of blocks away. GH2 passed by the Earth at a distance of 220,000 miles, which put it about 16,000 miles closer than the moon.