Moby dick the asteroid has not yet caused destruction, unlike its fictional, white whale namesake. But by going missing, it has highlighted just how poor Earthlings are at asteroid surveillance. The 270-metre space rock, officially called 2000 EM26, was slated to skim within 3.4 million kilometres of our planet early on 18 February, almost exactly a year after a meteor struck Earth in Chelyabinsk, Russia. But when a robotic telescope trained its eye on the predicted position, 2000 EM26 was nowhere to be found.
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