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The largest asteroid expected to pass over our planet in 2021 will be at its closest rate to March 21, NASA has said, adding that there is no risk of an accident with Earth . Called 2001 FO32, the near – Earth asteroid will approach its closest approach to a distance of about two million kilometers, the U.S. space agency said Thursday. The asteroid is about 0.8 to 1.7 kilometers in diameter, according to a report in Living Science.
“We know the orbital orbit of the 2001 FO32 around the Sun very accurately, since its discovery 20 years ago and has been following ever since,” said Paul Chodas, Center Director for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
“There is no chance that the asteroid will get closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles. However, that distance is close to astronomy, which is why 2001 FO32 is identified as an” asteroid. potentially dangerous. “During this approach, 2001 FO32 passes at about 124,000 kph – faster than the speed at which most asteroids cross the Earth to Earth’s orbital plane.
This orbit brings the asteroid closer to the Sun than Mercury and twice as far from the sun as Mars. The March 21 meeting will give astronomers a more detailed understanding of the size and albedo of the asteroid – ie how clear, or reflective, its surface is – and a rough idea of its writing. This will be accomplished, in part, by using NASA’s IRTF Infrared Telescope (IRTF) facility, a 3.2-meter telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii that will observe the asteroid in the days following up closely using the workhorse infrared spectrograph, SpeX. “We’re trying to do geology with a telescope,” said Vishnu Reddy, Associate Professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
