--- title: "“City Killer” Asteroid Whizzes Past Earth Almost Undetected" description: "A massive space rock and city-killer asteroid almost hit Earth in 2019, flying only 73,000 kilometers away from Earth's surface." date: "2019-07-26" modified: "2019-08-06" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/city-killer-asteroid-earth-undetected" categories: - "Science & Energy" tags: - "asteroid" - "asteroid collision" - "killer asteroid" - "the digest" --- # “City Killer” Asteroid Whizzes Past Earth Almost Undetected ![A massive space rock called Asteroid 2019 OK just flew right past Earth reaching a distance of only 73,000 kilometers away from our planet's surface.]() *\Image: Shutterstock/Victor Tangermann\* ## Asteroid 2019 OK A space rock that could have leveled an entire city just hurtled right past Earth, coming within six Earth diameters of smashing into our home planet. Astronomers didn't spot the "city killer" asteroid, [according to the *Washington Post*,]() until days before it careened close to the Earth than the Moon at about 61 times the speed of a commercial jet. NASA data suggests the asteroid is about 100 meters wide. To put it into perspective: the [massive meteor strike]() above Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 was only 20 meters across and exploded with [more energy]() than a nuclear weapon. In other words, the Earth just avoided a disaster of bonkers proportions. ## Not OK The space rock is big enough to be a "city-killer asteroid," a nickname given to space rocks that pass Earth this closely, according to Alan Duffy, lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, who spoke with *The Post*. "It should worry us all quite frankly," said Duffy. "It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger... It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon." "It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years," Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told *The Post*. "It snuck up on us pretty quickly." So why wasn't it spotted earlier? That's likely to do with it's unusual orbit that had it hurtling by Mars and Venus at much higher than average velocity. Only three days earlier, the asteroid was [a thousand times fainter]() and harder to spot from Earth. **READ MORE:** [‘It snuck up on us’: A ‘city-killer’ asteroid just missed Earth and scientists almost didn’t detect it in time]() \[*The Washington Post*\] **More on close calls:** *[It's Unlikely, but a 164-Foot Asteroid May Hit Earth in September]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()