Will Asteroid 2018 QE 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 2018 QE will hit the Earth in the near future. Asteroid 2018 QE 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 2018 QE is not going to impact Earth in the near future.

In fact, considering the next 10 years, the closest approach of Asteroid 2018 QE with the Earth is happening on Wednesday 9 October 2024 at 04:03 UTC time. At that time the closest distance between Asteroid 2018 QE and the Earth is 668,092 kilometers, which is a distance equivalent to 1.7377 Lunar Distances, or 104.86 Earth Radii.