The largest asteroid to graze the Earth in 2021 will pass “close” to us this Sunday, however some two million kilometers away, without any risk of collision. But the event will allow astronomers to study the celestial object.
Called 2001 FO32 and measuring less than a kilometer in diameter, it will spin at 124,000 km / h, “faster than most asteroids” passing close to Earth, according to NASA.
The rocky body, which is not on its first visit, is due to pass closest to our planet this Sunday at 4:02 p.m. GMT (5:02 p.m. Paris time). It will then be 2,016,158 km from Earth, or about five times the Earth-Moon distance.
“There is no risk of collision with our planet,” reassures the US space agency. Its trajectory is indeed “sufficiently well known and regular” to rule out any danger, guarantee the experts of the Paris-PSL Observatory.
The large rocky body is nevertheless classified as “potentially dangerous”, like all asteroids whose orbit is less than 19.5 times the Earth-Moon distance and whose diameter is greater than 140 meters.
This category is “relentlessly hunted down by astronomers around the world to draw up the most exhaustive possible inventory”, underlines the Observatory, recalling that the first – and the largest – asteroid, Ceres, had been discovered in 1801. .
The asteroid “2001 FO32” was observed for the first time in 2001 and has since been the subject of close surveillance. It belongs to the “Apollo” family of near-Earth asteroids, which circle the Sun in at least one year and can cross Earth’s orbit.
“Currently, little is known about this object, so this close passage gives us an incredible opportunity to learn a lot,” said Lance Benner, scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, on which the Study Center depends. near-earth objects (CNEOS).
According to CNEOS, “amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and at low northern latitudes should be able to see it.” “We will have to wait until it gets dark and arm ourselves with a good telescope at least 20 centimeters in diameter,” Florent Delefie, of the Paris Observatory, told AFP.
“We should see a white point moving like a satellite,” added the astronomer. The trajectory has nothing to do with that of shooting stars, very small asteroids which form a luminous line splitting the sky in a fraction of a second.
None of the large asteroids listed stand a chance of crashing into Earth in the next century.