<p>An asteroid the size of an SUV passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above Earth, the closest asteroid ever observed passing by our planet, NASA said Tuesday.</p>.<p>If it had been on a collision course with Earth, the asteroid -- named 2020 QG -- would likely not have caused any damage, instead of disintegrating in the atmosphere, creating a fireball in the sky, or a meteor, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a statement.</p>.<p>The asteroid, which was about 10 to 20 feet (three to six meters) long, passed above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday at 0408 GMT.</p>.<p>It was moving at nearly eight miles per second (12.3 kilometers per second), well below the geostationary orbit of about 22,000 miles at which most telecommunication satellites fly.</p>.<p>The asteroid was first recorded six hours after its approach by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a telescope at the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology, as a long trail of light in the sky.</p>.<p>The US space agency said that similarly sized asteroids pass by Earth at a similar distance a few times per year.</p>.<p>But they're difficult to record, unless they're heading directly towards the planet, in which case the explosion in the atmosphere is usually noticed -- as in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013, when the explosion of an object about 66 feet long shattered windows for miles, injuring a thousand people.</p>.<p>One of NASA's missions is to monitor larger asteroids (460 feet) that could actually pose a threat to Earth, but their equipment also tracks smaller ones.</p>.<p>"It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bends its trajectory," said Paul Chodas, the director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA.</p>.<p>According to the JPL's calculations, the asteroid turned by about 45 degrees due to Earth's gravitational pull.</p>
<p>An asteroid the size of an SUV passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above Earth, the closest asteroid ever observed passing by our planet, NASA said Tuesday.</p>.<p>If it had been on a collision course with Earth, the asteroid -- named 2020 QG -- would likely not have caused any damage, instead of disintegrating in the atmosphere, creating a fireball in the sky, or a meteor, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a statement.</p>.<p>The asteroid, which was about 10 to 20 feet (three to six meters) long, passed above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday at 0408 GMT.</p>.<p>It was moving at nearly eight miles per second (12.3 kilometers per second), well below the geostationary orbit of about 22,000 miles at which most telecommunication satellites fly.</p>.<p>The asteroid was first recorded six hours after its approach by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a telescope at the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology, as a long trail of light in the sky.</p>.<p>The US space agency said that similarly sized asteroids pass by Earth at a similar distance a few times per year.</p>.<p>But they're difficult to record, unless they're heading directly towards the planet, in which case the explosion in the atmosphere is usually noticed -- as in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013, when the explosion of an object about 66 feet long shattered windows for miles, injuring a thousand people.</p>.<p>One of NASA's missions is to monitor larger asteroids (460 feet) that could actually pose a threat to Earth, but their equipment also tracks smaller ones.</p>.<p>"It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bends its trajectory," said Paul Chodas, the director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA.</p>.<p>According to the JPL's calculations, the asteroid turned by about 45 degrees due to Earth's gravitational pull.</p>