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An amazing photo revealed the moment an enormous asteroid flew over Earth yesterday, losing our planet by around 3.9 million miles.
Called 52768 (1998 OR2), the asteroid made its closest approach to Earth around 10:56 BST yesterday, at which time it was about 3.9 million miles from Earth.
While this may sound distant, it is actually classified as a “close focus” by NASA.
The massive asteroid is estimated to be between 1.8 km and 4.1 km in diameter. At the high end of that estimate, he suggests that the asteroid could be up to five times larger than the world’s largest building, the Burj Khalifa!
Scientists at the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome hosted a live broadcast of the asteroid last night, showing the space rock as it flew through the night sky.
Video not available
Gian Masi, who presented the live broadcast, explained: “We know where the asteroid is because we know its orbit. And this same orbit allows us to say “it won’t hit us.”
The telescope images are quite grainy, but clearly show the asteroid flying through a star-filled night sky.
While this particular asteroid was not close to hitting Earth, NASA has not ruled out the possibilities of an asteroid collision in the near future.
(Image: Gian Masi)
NASA discovers around 30 new “Near Earth Objects” (NEO) each week, and by early 2019 it had discovered a total of more than 19,000 objects.
However, the space agency warned that its NEO catalog is not complete, meaning that an unforeseen impact could occur “at any time.”
NASA explained: “Experts estimate that the impact of an object the size of the one that exploded on Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, approximately 55 feet (17 meters) in size, occurs once or twice a century.
“The impacts of larger objects are expected to be much less frequent (on the scale of centuries to millennia).
“However, given the current incompleteness of the NEO catalog, an unforeseen impact, such as the Chelyabinsk event, could occur at any time.”
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