New Delhi: A newly-discovered asteroid passed in close proximity to the Earth, just 14,000 km above the planet's surface, today but caused no damage to the orbiting communication satellites.
The asteroid "2012 KT42," which entered the Clark Belt of geosynchronous satellites, passed by Earth at around 1230 hours, S N Raghunandan Kumar of Planetary Society of India said.
The 3 to 10-metre wide asteroid ranks in the list of top ten of closest asteroid approaches to Earth. In fact, this is the sixth closest approach till date, which makes it significant despite its small size.
The asteroid was not visible to the unaided eye.
According to the asteroid's orbit, there was no danger of a collision. Even if it did hit, the space rock is too small to cause significant damage. It would have possibly disintegrated almost entirely in the atmosphere, peppering the ground below with relatively small meteorites, Kumar said.
Asteroids are a class of solar system bodies in the orbit around the sun. The larger asteroids are been called planetoids.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, May 29, 2012, 13:04