--- title: Asteroid Flies Pretty Close to Earth This Week description: An asteroid whizzed past Earth this week about two days after it was first detected by astronomers. canonical: https://time.com/4631206/asteroid-earth-2017-ag13/ author: Melissa Chan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-11T12:51:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-07T07:13:13.675Z article:section: Science og:title: An Asteroid Passed Pretty Close to Earth This Week og:description: Astronomers detected it about two days before it zoomed by og:url: https://time.com/4631206/asteroid-earth-2017-ag13/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40c389870f66a4a8/6988b519bc6cfc7d0f3dfbfa/planet-earth.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: planet-earth og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: An Asteroid Passed Pretty Close to Earth This Week twitter:description: Astronomers detected it about two days before it zoomed by twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt40c389870f66a4a8/6988b519bc6cfc7d0f3dfbfa/planet-earth.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # An Asteroid Passed Pretty Close to Earth This Week > Sponsored content. 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Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=7e2f121e-6ca2-4910-937b-6bd075bdec20&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TgSKV2RZ.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2013-02-13. A near miss of the earth by an asteroid could foreshadow future catastrophe from space. TIME's Jeffrey Kluger explains._  by [Melissa Chan](https://time.com/author/melissa-chan/)  ## Melissa Chan Jan 11, 2017 12:51 PM UTC A near miss of the earth by an asteroid could foreshadow future catastrophe from space. TIME's Jeffrey Kluger explains.  by [Melissa Chan](https://time.com/author/melissa-chan/)  ## Melissa Chan Jan 11, 2017 12:51 PM UTC An [asteroid whizzed past Earth](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2017/01/10/asteroid/rwB1ZLOJRrHWW1uESkb50J/story.html) this week about two days after it was first detected by astronomers, the _Boston Globe_ reports. The space rock, which is officially called 2017 AG13, flew between Earth and the moon Monday about 8 a.m. EST, notes [Eric Edelman](http://www.space.com/35257-asteroid-flies-between-earth-and-moon-2-days-after-discovery-commentary-video.html), an astronomer with the Slooh telescope service, in a video published on Space.com. The asteroid, believed to be between 50 and 111 feet wide, moves about 10 miles per second and is “stretched out” like a rubber band instead of shaped like a circle, according to Slooh. While it’s [common](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/sneaky-asteroid-buzzed-earth-yesterday-180961742/) for asteroids of that size to orbit near Earth, Edelman says the latest object stands out because it came within half the distance of the moon. “What makes it unique is sort of how close by it was to us at that point,” he explains. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Earth lives in a shooting gallery of asteroids, any one of which could hit us one day. Here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ] What caused all the stir this week, was a 140 foot long asteroid that buzzed the Earth at an altitude of just 17, 000 miles. Now that sounds like a lot, but it's only 1 / 14th of the weight of the Moon, and it's actually 5, 000 miles below the altitude in which some of our communication satellites fly. The fact is Earth gets hit by space debris all the time. A hundred tons of material enter our atmosphere everyday, including at least one basketball size rock. And every few months a rock about the size of a Volkswagen comes in also. Most of that material is incinerated long before it reaches the ground. But if a rock gets to about 100 to a 150 feet, a significant chunk of it can survive, and that can produce problems. It's not just the size of an asteroid that causes problems. It's the energy it carries as it speeds into the atmosphere. That's why a rock that's relatively small, just 120 feet across, can produce a blast equivalent to 2. 4 megatons, or 180 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb. [ MUSIC ] An asteroid the size of the one that just buzzed the Earth passes by about once every 40 years and will hit the ground about once every 1200 years. The kind of asteroid that causes local, or even global devastation, arrives about once every 10, 000 to 100, 000 years. 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