On Jan 30th a small asteroid came close to hitting the Earth

On Jan 30^th a small asteroid came close to hitting the Earth.

Close in space terms means about 40,000 miles, and small in asteroid terms means 15-32 feet wide. This will be the closest an asteroid has come to hitting the Earth since September 6, 2016. Don’t let that worry you, even if it had struck the Earth it would not have done a crazy about of damage. This one is nowhere near the size of the planet killing asteroid featured in the movie Armageddon. Just for comparison “Dottie” was the size of Texas, 790 miles across, which would be larger than the dwarf planet Ceres, while this asteroid is about the size of a Winnebago.

The asteroid's name is 2017 BH30 and it travels at about 15.46 km/s in an orbit around the sun that sometimes crosses the orbit of Earth. It is one of the 15,000+ objects that are being tracked by NASA’s Near Earth Object Program and part of a group of objects known as the Apollo group.
The Near earth Object Program tracks comets and asteroids that are near Earth, most of which are left-overs from the long process of planet creation. These objects are broken down into a few different groups depending on their nature. 2017 BH30 belongs to a group called the Apollos which are Near Earth Asteroids whose orbit crosses Earth’s. Many of these asteroids are considered potential hazards because they could one day collide with the Earth’s surface.

This infographic contains more information about 2017 BH30 and the Near Earth Object Program.