A plane-size asteroid buzzes by Earth undetected

cnet.com ^ | July 27, 2017 | Eric Mack

[John W]

Astronomers first spotted an asteroid about as long as a 737 passenger jet on Sunday and analyzed its path to determine it had made a close pass by our planet three days earlier.

In other words, the big space rock slipped right by us without being detected and was only seen in our cosmic rear-view mirror.

While the asteroid, now named 2017 001, flew right on by without incident, it was a relatively close pass. It came within about one-third the distance between Earth and the moon, roughly 76,448 miles (123,031 km).

With an estimated size of between 82 and 256 feet (25 and 78 meters), it was around three times as big as the bolide that entered our atmosphere in 2013 and exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, blowing out windows and causing numerous injuries on the ground. That house-size bit of cosmic debris also had been previously undetected.

[Western Phil]

So, which agency is supposed to monitor for such events?

Maybe they had a Czar that disappeared with the previous administration?

[Axenolith]

Unless it landed near on top of you you’d be fine, that’d probably hardly yield 100 Kt

[Hot Tabasco]

the big space rock slipped right by us without being detected

Who would have thought asteroids were equipped with stealth mode.........