Robotic Telescope Finds Closest Known Asteroid To Fly by Earth
Whitney Clavin, California Institute of Technology / August 19, 2020 / Phys.org

On August 16, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a robotic survey camera located at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, spotted an asteroid that had, just hours earlier, traveled only 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Designated 2020 QG, it is the closest known asteroid to fly by Earth without impacting the planet. The previous known record-holder is asteroid 2011 CQ1, discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2011, which passed above Earth about 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) higher than 2020 QG.

Asteroid 2020 QG is about 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) across, or roughly the size of an SUV, so it was not big enough to do any damage even if it had been pointed at Earth; instead, it would have burned up in our planet’s atmosphere.

“The asteroid flew close enough to Earth that Earth’s gravity significantly changed its orbit”…

Huh.

That was about the same day that former FBI agent Kevin Clinesmith admitted forging an email for a FISA application to continue wiretapping Carter Page — and, by the FBI’s two-hop rule, Donald Trump, too — both during the campaign and after the inauguration. Maybe the whole trajectory of the attempted coup is changing.