Asteroid ’2019 OK’ Barnstorms the Earth (July 25, 2019)

An accurate motion model based on NASA JPL data, we are flying alongside Asteroid ’2019 OK’. As you can see in this video, 2019 OK approached from the night side of Earth and should have been detected with ease (like many smaller rocks). Likely, the asteroid avoided detection due to two main factors... 1) It passed far to the south, where there are too few asteroid-detecting telescopes, and 2) Farther north, it is summertime, leaving fewer nighttime hours for asteroid hunting. Nonetheless, 2019 OK was plain to see, and shows us that we need more eyes on the sky -- particularly covering the southern hemisphere. As it turns out, passing this close to Earth, Doppler radar was used to study the orbit, and adding archived observations from 2017, we now have a very accurate model for future fly-bys covering the next ~180 years (offering many more chances to refine this model). FYI - If this rock hits the Earth in the distant future, it would produce an effect similar in force to the Tunguska e