Asteroid which ruffled Earth's gravity discovered by IIT-B students

QG, it is the closest known asteroid to fly by Earth without impacting the planet. The previous record-holder was asteroid 2011CQ1 discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey in 2011 which flew past the Earth 2,500 km higher than the 2020QG.

During the research, Sharma and Deshmukh were analysing the ZTF data and reported five streaks as "potential asteroids" little realising that one of them would be a record-breaker.

"The data looked like all other Near Earth Asteroids we have seen so far," said Deshmukh, 20, from Pune, who is a final year student in the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science, IIT-Bombay.

Sharma

( With inputs from IANS )