Asteroid Buzzes Earth From 'Blind Spot'
New Scientist
March 15, 2002
One of the largest asteroids known to have approached the Earth zipped past about 450,000 kilometres away on March 8 - but nobody recorded it until four days later.
The object, now called 2002 EM7, was hard to spot because it was moving outward from the innermost point of its orbit, 87 million km from the Sun. When it passed closest to the Earth - just 1.5 times the distance to the Moon - it was too close to the Sun to be visible.
Asteroids approaching from this blind spot cannot be seen by astronomers. If a previously unknown object passed through this zone on a collision course with Earth, it would not be identified until it was too late for any intervention.
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