The largest asteroid of 2021 will zip past the earth this weekend

A massive asteroid first discovered 20 years ago will orbit the Earth within 1.25 million miles on Sunday before being ejected into deep space, NASA has revealed.

Named 2001 FO32, it is twice the size of the Eiffel Tower at 2,230 feet in diameter, making it the largest space rock to have surpassed Earth so far this year.

As FO32 travels to its inner solar system in 2001, the asteroid ‘picks up speed like a skateboarder rolling down a half-pipe, and then slows down after swinging back into deep space and swinging back in the direction of the sun’. NASA explains.

The space agency says it ‘poses no danger to the earth’, because even at its nearest point it will be more than five times farther from our planet than the moon.

It will follow its closest approach on March 21, but is only visible to astronomers using larger telescopes in the southern hemisphere and northern regions of low latitude.

Despite being more than a million kilometers away, NASA says it will give astronomers a rare glimpse into the rocky remains of the beginning of the solar system.

“Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and at low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using medium-sized telescopes with diaphragms of at least 8 centimeters in the nights that follow the closest approach,” Chodas said.

However, he added that it would not be easy to find because it is small and a short distance away, saying that they would probably need star charts to find it.

According to NASA’s Near Earth Object ‘guidelines, it will still be close enough for FO32 2001 to be classified as a’ potentially dangerous asteroid ‘.

This is partly because the orbit intersects the Earth’s orbit – although it is not ‘in line’ or near the Earth in the near or even distant future, NASA said.

The space agency said in a statement that “there is no threat of a collision with our planet now or for centuries to come.”

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

The reason for the asteroid’s extraordinarily fast close approach is the strongly oblique and elongated (or eccentric) orbit around the sun.

It is an orbit tilted 39 degrees to the earth’s orbital plane. This orbit takes the asteroid closer to the sun than Mercury and twice as far from the sun as Mars.

The space rock completes one orbit of the sun every 810 days (about 2 1/4 years).

“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.

The March 21 meeting will give astronomers the opportunity to gain a more precise understanding of the size and albedo of the asteroid – how bright or reflective the surface is – and a rough idea of ​​its composition.

“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.

This will be achieved in part with the use of NASA’s infrared telescope facility, a 10.5ft telescope on top of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

It will detect the asteroid during the days before the close approach using the infrared spectrograph, SpeX, of its workhorse.

“We’re trying to do geology with a telescope,” said Vishnu Reddy, an associate professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson.

When sunlight hits the surface of an asteroid, minerals in the rock absorb wavelengths of light as it reflects again. Scientists know which rocks reflect which wavelengths, so that the composition of the asteroid can determine from the light.

“We’re going to use the IRTF to show the infrared spectrum its chemical composition,” Reddy explained. “Once we know that, we can make comparisons with meteorites on Earth to find out what minerals 2001 FO32 contains.”

For example, a low albedo, or darker, asteroid can contain a lot of carbon, and according to NASA it could be the core of a long-dead comet.

Other observatories will use radar to jump signals off the rock so that they can determine the orbit, dimensions, rotation and look at surface features such as rocks and craters.

“Observations dating back 20 years have shown that about 15% of the asteroids near Earth, comparable to the size of 2001 FO32, have a small moon,” said Lance Benner, chief scientist at JPL.

“Little is known about this object at present, so the very close encounter provides an excellent opportunity to learn a lot about this asteroid.”

Amateur astronomers in some parts of the world need to be able to make their own observations, especially those in the southern hemisphere.

“The asteroid will be the brightest as it moves through the southern sky,” said Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

“Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using medium-sized telescopes with diaphragms of at least eight centimeters in the nights that follow the closest approach,” he added.

Because of their distance and relatively small size compared to planets or stars, they will probably need star charts to find it.

After its brief visit, FO32 will continue its journey in 2001 and only reach Earth near 2052, when it will pass at approximately seven lunar distances or 1.75 million miles.

NASA said that more than 95 percent of the asteroids near Earth were cataloged in 2001 FO32 or greater, and that none of them have the chance to affect our planet during the next century.