On Sunday, the largest asteroid this year flew at 77,000 mph per Earth.
However, the celestial object, which was given the designation of a “potentially dangerous asteroid” by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, did not come too close.
“We know the 2001 FO32 orbit around the sun very accurately, as it was discovered 20 years ago and has been followed ever since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is managed. by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “There is no chance that the asteroid will come closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”
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The asteroid, which completes one orbit every 810 days, reached its nearest point on Sunday, yet the rock was more than five times the distance between the earth and the moon.
The close call will enable the scientific study of the asteroid.
Lance Benner, chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “Little is known about this object at present, so the very close encounter provides an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about this asteroid.”
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Happy stargazers might just be watching the visit.
“The asteroid will be the brightest as it moves through the southern sky,” Chodas said. ‘Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using moderate telescopes with diaphragms at least 8 centimeters in the nights that follow the closest approach, but they will probably need star charts to do so. to find. “