At this point, most of us have heard about an asteroid that is going to hit Earth on November 2nd right before the election. With everything else that has happened this year, this feels like “just another bad thing” and many people are of the opinion that an asteroid striking the Earth and causing major destruction just “sounds about right”. However, the facts point to something very different and we all need to calm down and take a deep breath. Asteroid 2018VP1 possess no threat to the Earth. It will cause no destruction and in fact, won’t even be noticed unless you know where to look.

The reason I know that nothing bad is going to happen is because of the information provided by the hard-working scientists at the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, or CNEOS. Here they have taken the time to study nearly all the objects close to Earth. They know how these objects travel around our solar system and their relation to Earth’s orbit. In fact, this organization can tell you if any object is going to come close to Earth months in advance. They have a small budget of about $4million a year and they use it to discover and track any object that comes close to the Earth. About 90% of the near-Earth objects larger than 1 kilometer have been discovered and constantly tracked. That size is thought to be the minimal size needed for mass destruction. For comparison the election day asteroid in only 6.5 feet across.

The Election day Asteroid

Asteroid 2018VP1 was discovered back in 2018 and since then, it has observed 21 times over nearly 13 days. We know how large it is, how fast it’s going, the nature of its orbit, how close it will come to Earth, and more. It has been widely reported that 2018VP1 has a 0.41% chance of hitting Earth’s atmosphere and if it does it will simply burn up.

In total CNEOS is currently tracking over 18,000 objects and less than 900 of them are large than 1 kilometer. A little more than 8,000 are large than 140 meters. Those are still large enough to cause serious damage but again none of them a currently predicted to hit Earth. Objects coming close to Earth is a fairly common event.

To give you an idea of just how often asteroids come close to Earth here is a list of objects that will be passing by in the month of September.

 To learn more more please visit the CNEOS website.