The rocky body was discovered in March 2001 and its trajectory has been followed ever since.
The largest asteroid to approach Earth in 2021 will pass about two million kilometers away this Sunday, without risk of collision, but will allow astronomers to study this celestial object.
Named 2001 FO32 and less than a kilometer in diameter, it will pass at 124,000 km / h, “faster than most asteroids” orbiting Earth, according to NASA.
The rocky body will reach its closest point to our planet this Sunday at 16:02 GMT. It will then be 2,016,158 km from Earth, which is about five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
“There is no risk of a collision with our planet,” the US space agency said. His trajectory is “well known and regular enough” to rule out any danger, experts from the Paris-PSL Observatory guarantee.
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However, the large rocky body is classified as “potentially dangerous”, as all asteroids orbit is located less than 19.5 times the distance between Earth and the Moon and the diameter is greater than 140 meters.
Astronomers around the world are “tirelessly pursuing” this category to make the most comprehensive inventory possible, the Observatory points out, recalling that the first asteroid (and the largest), Ceres, was discovered in 1801.
The asteroid “2001 FO32” was discovered in March 2001 and its trajectory has been followed ever since. It belongs to the family of geocrucero asteroids “Apolo”, that give the return to the Sun in at least a year and can cross the Earth orbit.
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“Currently, we know little about this object, so this upcoming meeting gives us an incredible opportunity to learn a lot” about it, said Lance Benner, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on which the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
According to the CNEOS, “amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and low northern latitudes should be able to see it.”
“We should see a white dot moving like a satellite,” the astronomer added. The trajectory has nothing to do with that of shooting stars, very small asteroids that form a line of light that divides the sky in a fraction of a second.
None of the large asteroids cataloged have options to crash into Earth in the next century.
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