Probably the largest asteroid to come close to Earth this year, according to scientists, will fly past our planet on Sunday. The celestial body with the name 2001 FO32 and a diameter of several hundred meters approaches our globe to about 2 million kilometers, the US space agency NASA announced. That is more than five times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
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There is no risk of collision, neither now nor in the future. “We know the 2001 FO32 orbit around the Sun very well; we’ve been tracking him since he was discovered 20 years ago, ”said Paul Chodas of NASA. “There is no way the asteroid can get closer than 2 million kilometers.”
2001 FO32, orbiting the Sun once every 810 days, will skim past us at a speed of about 124,000 kilometers per hour, passing at a distance of 2.8 million km until 2052.
NASA scientists want to take the opportunity on Sunday to further investigate the asteroid. Even amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and low northern latitudes can peer at the object with even moderately sized telescopes, Chodas says.
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