Quoted from Live ScienceSaturday (2/4/2022), this asteroid crossed the Earth at a distance of about 7.4 million kilometers from the Earth or about 30 times the average distance between the Earth and the moon.
According to information from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and the International Astronomical Union, the asteroid’s trajectory is the closest since the asteroid’s discovery in 2007.
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The asteroid, named 2007 FF1, is an Apollo class asteroid that orbits the sun and crosses the path of Earth’s orbit. Asteroid 2007 FF1 orbits the sun every 684 days and often comes within a few tens of millions of miles of Earth.
Asteroid 2007 FF1’s last approach took place in August 2020, which is 17.3 million km from Earth at a speed of about 47,950 kilometers per hour, according to SpaceReference.org.
Asteroid diameter between 110 to 200 meters is considered potentially dangerous because of its size and its relatively close distance to Earth. However, projections of the asteroid’s path over the coming decades suggest that it won’t come any closer than this for the foreseeable future.
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According to SpaceReference.org, the next closest approach is expected to occur on April 2, 2037, when the asteroid will reach its minimum distance to Earth of about 7.9 million kilometers.
NASA and other space agencies are closely monitoring this near-Earth object. In November 2021, NASA launched a spacecraft that would deflect an asteroid called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
DART will hit asteroid Dimorphos is 160 meters wide in the fall of 2022. The collision will not destroy the asteroid but will only change the orbital path of the rock slightly. This mission will help test the feasibility of asteroid deflection, should some future asteroids pose a threat to Earth.
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