2002 MN is the

provisional designation Provisional designation in astronomy is the naming convention applied to astronomical objects immediately following their discovery. The provisional designation is usually superseded by a permanent designation once a reliable orbit has been calcu ...

given to a 73-meter

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

near-Earth asteroid A near-Earth object (NEO) is any small Solar System body orbiting the Sun whose closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) is less than 1.3 times the Earth–Sun distance (astronomical unit, AU). This definition applies to the object's orbit aro ...

that on 14 June 2002 passed

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

at a distance of , about one third the distance to the Moon (0.3 LD). The close approach was second only to the Earth approach by the 10-meter asteroid 1994 XM1. 2002 MN was discovered on 17 June 2002, three days after closest approach. Its mass and relative velocity were in the same general range as the object ascribed to the

Tunguska event The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 TNT equivalent, megatons that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908. The explosion over ...

of 1908, which leveled over of trees in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. 2002 MN was estimated to have a 1 in 360,000 chance of Earth impact sometime after 2070, but further observations in July 2024 ruled this out, and the object was removed from the risk list.

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External links

* * * # Minor planet object articles (unnumbered) Near-Earth objects removed from the Sentry Risk Table 20020614 20020617 {{NE-asteroid-stub