Last month, an asteroid slammed into Earth’s atmosphere just hours after being detected. Somehow, it managed to bypass impact monitoring systems during its approach to our planet. However, on the bright side, the object was only 1 meter in diameter and posed very little threat to anything on the Earth’s surface.

This asteroid, designated 2024 UQ, was first discovered on October 22 by the Asteroid Earth Impact Late Warning Warning System (ATLAS) in Hawaii, an array of four telescopes that scan the sky for moving objects that could be space rocks on their way to collide with Earth. Two hours later, the asteroid burned up over the Pacific Ocean near California, making it an “imminent impactor.”