PARIS, June 20: An asteroid capable of razing a major city came within a whisker of hitting the earth on June 14, scientists announced on Thursday.

Asteroid 2002 MN, estimated at up to 120 metres long, passed the earth at a distance of just 120,000 kilometres, a hair’s breadth in galactic terms, Britain’s National Space Centre said in a statement.

The last time a known asteroid came this close was on December 9, 1994, when a 10-metre rock, 1994 XM1, approached within 105,000 kilometres.

“2002 MN is a lightweight among asteroids and incapable of causing damage on a global scale, such as the object associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs,” the agency’s Near Earth Object Information Centre, based in the central English city of Leicester, said.

“However, if it had hit the earth 2002 MN may have caused local devastation similar to that which occurred in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, when 2,000 square kilometres of forest were flattened (by a space object)”, it said.

The risk of the earth being hit by an asteroid or comet is very remote and most objects never come so close as 2002 MN.

NASA’s Near Earth Object Program website confirmed the incident and said the 2002 MN was spotted by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research, a project funded by the US Air Force and NASA.

The US publication Sky et Telescope said the asteroid was only spotted on June 17 — three days after its flyby.

“What is most shocking is just how close it came to earth,” Sky et Telescope said.

“Though the exact details of an impact scenario depend on the rock’s composition, had it hit the earth, the event would have been ‘Tunguska-like’, with a force rivalling the largest H-bombs.”

US and other astronomers are working hard to map large asteroids, greater than a kilometre across that could inflict lasting climate change.

One such monster is believed to have wacked into what is modern-day Mexico 65 million years, kicking up dust and debris that swathed the planet, and unleashing a prolonged winter that ended the long reign of the dinosaurs.

But many specialists are deeply worried that smaller space wanderers, which would collide with the impact of a nuclear bomb, are still uncharted.—AFP