On Sunday, the largest asteroid this year flew 77,000 miles through Earth.
The spacecraft, which has been designated a “potentially dangerous asteroid” by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, did not go very close, though.
“We know the orbit of the 2001 FO32 around the Sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been discovered ever since,” said the director of the Center for Near Earth Earth Project Studies (CNEOS). Paul Chodas said. By NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The planet is unlikely to come closer than 1.25 million miles to Earth.”
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The planet, which completes one orbit every 810 days, reached its closest point on Sunday, but the rock was still more than five times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
A closer call would allow a scientific study of asteroids.
Lance Banner, chief scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “Little is known about this object object at the moment, so a very close encounter provides an excellent opportunity to learn a great deal about this asteroid.”
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The lucky stargazers can only witness the visit.
“The asteroid will be bright when it passes through the southern sky,” Chodas said. “Amateur astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere and lower northern latitudes should be able to see the planet using a medium-sized telescope with a hole of at least 8 inches in the night, leading to closer approaches, but they will probably need star charts to find it.”
