An asteroid traveling at over 28,000 miles per hour passed by the earth on May the 15th, 2018. Not an unusual occurrence at all, but what was alarming was that the asteroid (2010 WC9) had once been known and observed, but then had gone missing; astronomers had not seen it in nearly eight years.

This is the new reality of tracking near-earth objects (NEOs); as we constantly get better at spotting NEOs we are becoming increasingly aware of just how many there are whizzing around the the solar system in general, and of particular concern, how many asteroids there are that venture closer-in to the sun, nearer to the inner rocky planets – our neighborhood. Occasionally, as in the case of 2010 WC9, we can lose track of the orbital path of an asteroid.