Stealthy asteroid zooms by Earth closer than ever recorded — and NASA missed it

An SUV-sized asteroid flew past Earth, and NASA didn’t see it coming.

The asteroid passed 1,830 miles above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday, NASA said in a Tuesday news release.

It came closer to Earth than any asteroid had before, NASA said.

“Near Earth Asteroids, or NEAs, pass by our home planet all the time,” NASA said. “But an SUV-size asteroid set the record this past weekend for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA.”

The asteroid, which was 10 to 20 feet wide, likely would have become a fireball and broken up in Earth’s atmosphere before it crashed into the planet, NASA said.

It wouldn’t have caused any damage, and the asteroid is relatively “very, very small,” EarthSky reported.

The asteroidwas travelingat a speed of about 7.7 miles per second, or 27,600 miles per hour, according to EarthSky.

“It’s really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth’s gravity dramatically bend its trajectory,” Pat Chodas, the director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said in the news release. “Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet.”

The zooming asteroid, however, wasn’t detected by NASA until after its close encounter with Earth. Astronomers didn’t see it for six hours after it passed, according to EarthSky.

“The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun,” Chodas told Business Insider. “We didn’t see it coming.”