Large asteroid passing by Earth on March 21: NASA

The largest asteroid moving through Earth this year will approach within two hundred million kilometers of our planet on March 21, NASA said on Thursday.

The U.S. space agency said it would allow astronomers to investigate a rare asteroid exploration.

The asteroid, 2001 FO32, is estimated to be about 3,000 feet in diameter and was discovered 20 years ago, NASA said.

“We know the orbit of 2001 FO32 around the sun very accurately,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Object Studies near Earth. “There is no chance that the asteroid will come closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”

It is about 5.25 times the distance of the earth from the moon, but still close enough that FO32 can be classified as a “potentially dangerous asteroid” in 2001.

NASA said that from 2001, FO32 would pass about 77,000 miles per hour than the speed at which most asteroids hit Earth.

“Currently little is known about this object, so the very close encounter provides an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about this asteroid,” said Lance Benner, chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

NASA said astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of the size of the asteroid and a rough idea of ​​its composition by studying the light that reflects on the surface.

“When sunlight hits an asteroid’s surface, minerals in the rock absorb some wavelengths while reflecting others,” NASA said. “By studying the spectrum of light reflected from the surface, astronomers can measure the chemical ‘fingerprints’ of the minerals on the surface of the asteroid.”

Amateur astronomers in some parts of the world need to be able to make their own observations.

“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 through medium-sized telescopes with diaphragms of at least eight centimeters in the nights that follow the closest approach, but they will probably need star charts to to find it. “

NASA said that more than 95 percent of the Asteroids near Earth, the size of 2001 FO32 or larger, were cataloged and that none of them had the chance to affect our planet during the next century.

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© 2021 AFP