VIDEO Asteroid 2011 MD Narrowly Misses Earth - Irish Weather Online: One of the earth’s closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years took place Monday afternoon. But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the ‘cosmic close call’, the encounter was so close that Earth’s gravity sharply altered the asteroid’s trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.
2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth. The asteroid was only sighted for the first time last Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.