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Asteroid Set to Fly By Earth Before Election Day Poses No Threat, NASA Says

Asteroid expected to pass by Earth a day before November election

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In a tweet Sunday, NASA said an asteroid expected to pass by close to Earth on Nov. 2 , a day before the upcoming presidential election, "poses no threat" to the planet.

According to NASA Asteroid Watch, which is part of the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office that detects and tracks objects in space that may threaten Earth, this rock is nothing to worry about.

According to NASA data, Asteroid 2018VP1 was first discovered Nov. 3, 2018 and was observed for 13 days. Since that time, it has not been seen again but based on data observed at the time scientists were able to determine the asteroid's orbit and the likelihood that it would enter our atmosphere. Experts at NASA put the chances of that happening at .41% -- perhaps better put as a 99.59% chance that it will pass right by.

The latter would work out better for the asteroid since NASA also said that should the space rock enter our atmosphere it'd disintegrate before making it to the surface.

2018VP1 is an Apollo asteroid, meaning it's one of a group of thousands of near-Earth asteroids with an orbit larger than Earth's but that still crosses the planet's orbit. The classification is named after the first such asteroid, dubbed Apollo, was discovered in 1862.

NASA says the Earth is "bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles" every day and that even larger objects, such as the asteroid mentioned above or up to the size of a car, are too small to make it to the surface to do any damage.

On their Asteroid Fast Facts page, NASA said every 2,000 years or so a meteoroid the size of a football field hits Earth and causes damage and that only once every few million years does one come along that may threaten all life on the planet.

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