Asteroid Close Shave
Earth received a cosmic close shave on Sunday (April 15) when a football field-size boulder passed by at half the moon's distance from our planet. Named 2018 GE3, the asteroid was detected only a few hours before its flyby, spotted by the automated Catalina Sky Survey.
At its closest approach, at 2:41 a.m. EDT (0641 GMT), 2018 GE whipped by Earth at a distance of only 119,500 miles (192,300 kilometers), according to EarthSky. That's a close call, given that the asteroid has an estimated diameter of 157 to 361 feet (48 to 110 meters), making it much larger than the cosmic object that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013.
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