Several years ago the NASA funded Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program discovered an SUV sized asteroid which comes closer to Earth than about 1/6 of the distance to the Moon. It was2011 MD's mass and size make it a good candidate for NASA's plans to use a robotic space craft to intercept and redirect a small asteroid into an orbit around our Moon.named 2011 MD. It remained a minor curiosity until the Spitzer Space Telescope spotted it again.