Over the past few days there has been a significant media interest in 2015 TB145, a large asteroid that flew past Earth on the night of Halloween. Apart for the popularity of the event generated by the date,the fly-by itself is interesting from a scientific perspective, because it was discovered only three weeks before its closest approach.

The number of known near-Earth asteroids has just surpassed the threshold of 15000. That is a 50% increase with respect to 2013, when the 10000th object was found, highlighting the ever increasing success of ground-based NEO detection surveys.