It was just recently when the news of three asteroids dubbed 2019 OD, 2015 HM10, and 2019 OE moving past our Earth came to light. And another asteroid dubbed 2019 OK moved past our Earth yesterday at a ‘dangerously’ close distance of 70,000 kilometres, barely missing from hitting our Earth.

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As per the reports, Asteroid 2019 OK was sized between 57 and 130 metres in diameter when it was spotted racing towards Earth at 24 kilometres a second. This further added to the danger because the small size of the asteroid made it hard for astronomers to spot it. To put into perspective, asteroid 2019 OK was giant enough to cause an entire city to wipe out as indicated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

2019 OK was spotted speeding by our planet at around 1:22 PM Singapore Time (10:52 AM IST) on July 25. Also, astronomers couldn’t be warned beforehand since the asteroid was flying towards us from the direction of the sun. Moreover, it was just a few days back when the asteroid got discovered by the Brazilian SONEAR Survey.

“It’s impressively close. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. It’s a pretty big deal. [If it hit Earth] it makes the bang of a very large nuclear weapon – a very large one,” an associate Professor Michael Brown, from Monash University’s school of physics and astronomy told the Sunday Morning Herald.

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The fact that the asteroid was so close to hitting our Earth raises questions surrounding how NASA needs to have a more uptight defense plan to save our Earth from asteroid collisions. NASA is already working on a planetary defense technique, namely, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and given the fact that these asteroids keep posing risk to our planet, it only seems indispensable.