Will Asteroid 2017 SA20 Impact Earth?

There is some chance that you have reached this page because of some news stating that there is a significant risk that Asteroid 2017 SA20 will hit the Earth in the near future. Asteroid 2017 SA20 is in fact known as a Near Earth Object (or NEO), i.e. an asteroid whose orbit is close to intersect Earth's orbit. These asteroids are monitored very closely and, thanks to high precision position observations and celestial mechanic computations, their orbit is usually known with a high level of precision.

Based on the latest high precision orbit computations performed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), it is confirmed that Asteroid 2017 SA20 is not going to impact Earth in the near future.

In fact, considering the next 10 years, the closest approach of Asteroid 2017 SA20 with the Earth is happening on Friday 19 April 2024 at 09:48 UTC time. At that time the closest distance between Asteroid 2017 SA20 and the Earth is 1,464,211 kilometers, which is a distance equivalent to 3.8084 Lunar Distances, or 229.82 Earth Radii.