The one that gets us ...

 

... is the one we don't see coming.

Asteroids could be approaching Earth undetected as NASA scientists find a danger zone that allows space rocks to 'sneak up' on telescopes because of a quirk of the planet's daily rotation


- A football-pitch-wide asteroid passed within 43,500 miles of Earth back in 2019

- However, astronomers only spotted it 24 hours before its closest approach

- Experts led from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa investigated why this was

- They found that some approaching objects appear almost stationary in the sky

 
- This occurs when movement east is exactly counteracted by the Earth's rotation

- Apparently stationary/slow moving objects don't set off early warning systems

 
- Automated telescopes need updating to compensate, the team concluded

This is the warning of NASA-funded experts who investigated how telescopes nearly missed a 328-feet-wide asteroid that came within 43,500 miles of Earth back in 2019.

The space rock, dubbed '2019 OK', was the first object of its size to get that close to our planet since 1908 — but it was only spotted 24 hours before its closest approach.

The reason, the team determined, is because it was moving towards us in such a way that its motion across the night sky was counteracted by the Earth's spin.

So the next one might be bigger.  And it could be tomorrow.

(Probably not, though.)