A large near-Earth asteroid will safely pass Earth on Wednesday 29 April. NASA has stated that the 2km-wide asteroid, called 1998 OR2, will make a ‘close approach’ of 6.3 million km.
The asteroid will essentially pass by Earth 16 times farther away than the moon at 31 319 kilometres per hour.
This asteroid was discovered in July 1998 by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It has been tracked by astronomers for the past two decades. From this, the orbital trajectory is precisely understood.
In a statement NASA has reassured the public that the asteroid has zero possibility of impacting Earth, at least for the next 200 years. ‘Its next close approach to Earth will occur in 2079, when it will pass by closer — only about four times the lunar distance,’ said NASA.
‘Despite this, 1998 OR2 is still categorized as a large “potentially hazardous asteroid” because, over the course of millennia, very slight changes in the asteroid’s orbit may cause it to present more of a hazard to Earth than it does now.
‘This is one of the reasons why tracking this asteroid during its close approach — using telescopes and especially ground-based radar — is important, as observations such as these will enable an even better long-term assessment of the hazard presented by this asteroid.
‘Close approaches by large asteroids like 1998 OR2 are quite rare. The previous close approach by a large asteroid was made by asteroid Florence in September 2017. That 3-mile-wide (5-kilometer-wide) object zoomed past Earth at 18 lunar distances. On average, we expect asteroids of this size to fly by our planet this close roughly once every five years.’
Wow. Asteroid 1998 OR2 tumbling through space seen by the Arecibo observatory.
They confirm the space rock is ~ 2 km in diameter and rotates once every 4.1 hours.
1998 OR2 will safely make a #closeapproach of Earth on 29 April, at its closest being 16 x further than the Moon🌙 pic.twitter.com/Rf7a4eg0gZ
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) April 24, 2020
Image: NASA
