The largest asteroid expected to pass Earth this year will reach its closest point on March 21.
The space rock, which formed at the dawn of the solar system and was discovered in March 2001, is called 2001 FO32.
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According to a NASA release on Thursday, the asteroid will get no closer than 1.25 million miles – five and a quarter times the distance from Earth to the moon – and will pass by at 125,000 miles per hour.
Researchers believe the asteroid’s diameter is likely less than 1 kilometer.
There is no current threat of a collision with Earth, and it will not be for centuries to come.
That said, the FO32’s path in 2001 will provide astronomers with a rare opportunity to observe the asteroid up close, as 1.25 million miles is still relatively close astronomically.
NASA explained that this technical aspect is why the asteroid has been labeled as ‘potentially dangerous’ and the agency assured that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) is working to “ accurately characterize each NEO’s orbit to long-term. hazard assessments. “
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“We know very accurately the 2001 FO32 orbit path around the sun, as it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,” said CNEOS Director Paul Chodas. “There is no chance the asteroid will get closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”
In addition, the asteroid’s rapid approach is due to its steeply sloping and elongated orbit around the Sun
After its fly-by on March 21, 2001, FO32 will not return close to Earth until 2052. The asteroid will be visible with a medium-sized telescope with openings of at least 20 cm in the nights prior to the closest approach.
The last notably large asteroid close to Earth was 1998 OR2 in April last year.
According to the agency, more than 95% of near-Earth asteroids the size of FO32 were discovered and tracked in 2001, and none of the large asteroids have any chance of hitting Earth in the next century.
According to the scientific journal Nature, a record number of asteroids flew past Earth in 2020.
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It reported Thursday that scientists had cataloged 2,958 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids despite the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 107 of which had passed Earth at a distance closer than that of the moon.
The current known number of asteroids is 1,068,721.