2020 VT4, as its official name goes, is the size of a van and was less than 400 kilometers from Earth’s surface, according to NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System. That is already within our atmosphere.
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The US space agency calls the asteroid a Near-Earth Object. And although a space rock may seem about 10 meters in size, it is not large enough to be classified as “potentially very dangerous.” To do this, an asteroid must have a size of at least about 140 meters.
Objects of that specific size fall to Earth once every 2,000 years and cause enormous damage.
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Probably 2020 VT4 would not have made it to the surface of our planet. Asteroids less than 25 meters in size usually burn up completely when they are drawn deeper into the atmosphere and cause little or no damage.
In August, space rock 2020 QG also came pretty close. At a speed of 12 kilometers per second, that asteroid passed at an altitude of 3000 kilometers.
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