Washington: The largest asteroid to visit Earth in 2021 passes our planet on Sunday March 21 at a speed of around 124,000 km / h.
Although this speed is faster than the speed at which most asteroids encounter Earth, there is no threat of collision with our planet, NASA said earlier this month.
Called 2001 FO32, the near-Earth asteroid will make its closest approach at a distance of about two million kilometers.
“The reason for the asteroid’s unusually fast close approach is its strongly tilted and elongated (or eccentric) orbit around the Sun, an orbit tilted 39 degrees from the Earth’s orbital plane,” NASA said.
“This orbit brings the asteroid closer to the Sun than Mercury and twice as far from the Sun as Mars.”
The asteroid is about 0.8 to 1.7 km in diameter, according to a report published in Live Science.
“We have known very precisely the orbital trajectory of the 2001 FO32 around the Sun since its discovery 20 years ago and we have followed it since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Studies on Near Earth Objects. (CNEOS), which is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
“There is no chance that the asteroid will approach Earth within 1.25 million kilometers.”
However, this distance is close in astronomical terms, which is why 2001 FO32 has been designated a “potentially dangerous asteroid”.
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