Article Posted on : - Oct 12, 2010

A newly discovered car-sized asteroid will fly past Earth early Tuesday. Photo: NASA/JPL

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA (BNS): A newly discovered car-sized asteroid ‘2010 TD54’ will fly past Earth's surface within the Earth-Moon system, at an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers (27,960 miles) at 10:50 AM (GMT) on Tuesday.

According to NASA, the asteroid will be over southeastern Asia in the vicinity of Singapore at the time of fly pass. During its flyby, asteroid 2010 TD54 will have zero probability of impacting Earth.

The 5 to 10 meters (16 to 33 feet) wide asteroid was discovered by Catalina Sky Survey north of Tucson, Arizona on October 9th from a telescope during routine monitoring of the skies.

A five-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 30 million would be expected to pass daily within a lunar distance and one might strike Earth's atmosphere about every 2 years on average.

If an asteroid of the size of 2010 TD54 were to enter Earth’s atmosphere, it would be expected to burn up high in the atmosphere and cause no damage to Earth’s surface.

The distance used on the Near Earth Object page is always the calculated distance from the center of Earth. The distance stated for 2010 TD54 is 52,000 kilometers (32,000 miles).

By using both ground and space-based telescopes, NASA detects tracks and characterises asteroids and comets that passes near to the Earth’s surface.

NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Programme, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterises a subset of them and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous for Earth.