Our planet was very close to a major disaster and we had no idea until it passed. Tahiti was the asteroid closes potential target as the 2009 DD45 marked the Pacific Ocean while buzzing Earth. Just imagine the tsunami it would have triggered if it would have hit the ocean.

 

According to some scientists, this asteroid could have wiped out 500,000 miles of Earth upon impact.

 

The asteroid was the size of the one that landed in Siberia about 101 years ago was named 2009 DD45 and, according to the measurements of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it was about 48,800 miles from our planet when it passed it. That’s about a fifth of the distance to the Moon and about twice as far as the highest geostationary satellite which orbits the Earth

 

According to other data from the space agency, the asteroid had a diameter between 69 feet and 154 feet (about the size of a 10-story building). An asteroid about the same size hit Siberia in 1908 and practically erased 800 square miles of forest   

 

The first to spot the asteroid was the Siding Spring Survey program in Australia. The asteroid was later confirmed by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.

 

In 2004, another asteroid came as close as 4,000 miles of Earth, but it measured only 20 feet across.

 

Scientists said they spotted the asteroid, but knew it wouldn’t hit our planet. And if they knew it was going to hit Earth, would that have mattered?