Gee, that’s only a dozen times the radius of the Moon’s orbit around Earth.
At 3 million miles away ... pfft ...
When you think about it, it is remarkable that so many asteroids pass within 5 to 10 million miles of earth. The earth’s orbital radius is 93 million miles. The earth orbits the sun in a plane, so any asteroid coming close to earth has to pass through our orbital plane AND be at the location where the earth is in its orbit. Almost all the bodies in the solar system travel in roughly the same orbital plane. Those with highly elliptical orbits, hyperbolic orbits, or highly inclined orbits can intersect the earth’s path.
Tell us when to duck.
A much bigger satellite, 2000 miles diameter is SKIMMING past the earth RIGHT NOW, ONLY 240,000 miles away. PANIC!
And the Moon is 240,000 miles away. What matters is its path. Sensational headlines annoy me.
When they find one projected to pass within 75 feet of the Earth, then I’ll be concerned.
To me a skim would be like 10 miles.
Only two things wrong with that headline: Huge and Skim.
It’s the Sun. Their readers are about 4th grade bright... The ones who have to use Chapstick when they read. All that movement raises blisters.
Almost close enough to mess up my hair. I’d better panic.
If an oncoming asteroid is not measured in miles, it is not a huge asteroid, but a small rock. 500 ft = small rock.
3+ million miles is just not a “skim”. Sorry.