According to several confirmed reports, a truck-sized asteroid could possibly come in the Earth’s atmosphere the day before the November 2 election.
The asteroid, named 2018VP1, is pretty small according to NASA.
It has only a 0.41% likelihood of entering Earth’s atmosphere, but celestial objects that size tend to burn up anyway before reaching the ground, NASA told Business Insider.
“Asteroid 2018VP1 is very small, approximately 6.5 feet, and poses no threat to Earth,” a NASA representative told Business Insider. That’s about 2 meters long, like a refrigerator. “If it were to enter our planet’s atmosphere, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.”
2018VP1 has had a few close encounters with Earth before, dating back to 1970. It most recently visited in November 2018, roughly when it was discovered at CA.’s Palomar Observatory.
The size of asteroids like this one makes them hard to spot until they get close to Earth, but most pass by much farther away than the moon.
In fact, one dubbed 2020 QG passed just 1,830 miles above the Indian Ocean last week — the closest such encounter on record and NASA didn’t even see it coming,
