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Artist’s impression of a large space rock.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
A mountain-sized asteroid crossed our cosmic neighborhood on Wednesday and humanity survived, because even a spatially close pass isn’t really that close.
In fact, asteroid 1998 OR2 It was always less than 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km), which places it 16 times farther than the moon.
Still, 1998 OR2 was a rare space rock monster, 1.5 miles (2 km) across. It was large enough to allow multiple astronomers to catch him as he took a short walk around our domain.
Asteroid 1998 OR2 (the center point) passed through the constellation Hydra five days before its closest approach to Earth. It was about 4.4 million miles (7.08 million km) from Earth at the time.
Virtual telescope project
The object approached at 2:55 a.m. from the Pacific and returned to a deeper space. This is the first close-up view of such a large asteroid since 2017.
Interestingly, this week in space was also punctuated by a handful of much smaller asteroids that got much closer to our planet. According to the NASA database, at least five asteroids have come closer to our planet than the moon in the past seven days.
None of these asteroids was much larger than a house, but one, the 2020HS7 asteroid, came as close as the geosynchronous orbit, where many of our largest satellites are located.
We get such close visitors several times a year, so it’s really nothing to worry about, but it’s always worth watching (and lots of telescopes) in the sky.
See this:
How NASA’s DART could save the planet from a killer asteroid
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