Discovered by WISE (C51) MPC designation 2010 AU118 Aphelion 2.1 ± 0.8 AU (Q) Discovered 27 May 2010 Asteroid group Amor asteroid | Discovery date 27 May 2010 Minor planet category Amor NEO Perihelion 1.1 ± 0.3 AU (q) Absolute magnitude 17.6 | |
2010 AU118 (also written 2010 AU118) is an Amor near-Earth asteroid with an observation arc of only two days and thus a poorly determined orbit. It was announced on 27 May 2010 based on images taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) on 13–15 January 2010. It was removed from the Sentry Risk Table on 14 June 2014 as a result of an update to the Sentry software.
It is estimated to be 900 meters (3,000 ft) in diameter. It has a poorly constrained orbit with an uncertainty parameter of 9. Until the June 2014 solution, virtual clones of the asteroid, that fit the uncertainty region in the known trajectory, showed a 1 in 769,231,000 chance that the asteroid could impact the Earth on 2020 October 20. With a Palermo Technical Scale of −4.26, the odds of an impact by 2010 AU118 in 2020 were about 18000 times less than the background hazard level of Earth impacts, which is defined as the average risk posed by objects of the same size or larger over the years until the date of the potential impact.