Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Huge, speedy asteroid to pass close to Earth next week

By
This photo shows the view from inside the dome of NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility during a night of observing. The 3.2-meter (10.5-foot) telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea will be used to measure the infrared spectrum of asteroid 2001 FO32.
This photo shows the view from inside the dome of NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility during a night of observing. The 3.2-meter (10.5-foot) telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea will be used to measure the infrared spectrum of asteroid 2001 FO32. UH/IfA

An asteroid will be whipping past Earth on March 21, coming within just five times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

Object 2001 FO32 is estimated to be between 1,300 to 2,230 feet (440 to 680 meters) wide and will pass by Earth at a speed of 77,000 mph (124,000 kph). At its closest, it will come within 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) of our planet, which is close enough for it to be classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid.”

Recommended Videos

Don’t worry though, researchers are sure that it won’t impact the Earth and will sail safely past us on its orbit.

“We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the Sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), in a statement. “There is no chance the asteroid will get any closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”

This will be an opportunity for researchers to examine the asteroid in more detail, though. It is moving faster than most asteroids do, due to its orbit which is both elongated and inclined. The asteroid’s speed increases as it moves through the inner solar system, then slows down as it moves away from the sun and into deep space. This orbit means the asteroid circles the sun every 810 days, and the intersection of this orbit with Earth’s orbit means it won’t be back in our neighborhood until 2052.

The asteroid will be studied with instruments like the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii, which will use infrared spectrography to see what the asteroid is made of by observing the wavelengths of light that it reflects. This could help researchers see what differences the asteroid has from meteorites on Earth.

And it’s not just the professionals who will be watching the asteroid closely. It’ll be an opportunity for amateur astronomers to observe it as well. “The asteroid will be brightest while it moves through southern skies,” said Chodas. “Amateur astronomers in the southern hemisphere and at low northern latitudes should be able to see this asteroid using moderate size telescopes with apertures of at least 8 inches in the nights leading up to closest approach, but they will probably need star charts to find it.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
NASA and Russian satellites just miss in ‘too close for comfort’ pass
An illustration of NASA's TIMED satellite.

There’s already enough hazardous debris in orbit, but on Wednesday, an incident occurred that almost created a whole lot more.

It involved NASA’s operational TIMED satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos 2221 satellite, which came alarmingly close to colliding about 378 miles (608 kilometers) above Earth.

Read more
Asteroid impacted by spacecraft is reshaped like an M&M ‘with a bite taken out’
An illustration shows a spacecraft from NASA's DART mission approaching the asteroid it was intended to redirect.

In 2022, the world watched with fascination as NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test of what kind of defense options might be available to humanity if an incoming asteroid ever threatened Earth. Observers could tell very quickly that the test, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART, was successful in changing the asteroid's orbit. But now astronomers have learned more, finding that the impact may have reshaped the asteroid significantly.

The asteroid impacted, called Dimorphos, is very small at around 500 feet across, and the DART spacecraft crashed into it at a tremendous speed of nearly 4 miles per second. Researchers have now used computer modeling to see the effects of this impact, given the limited amount of information we have on the composition and uneven surface of Dimorphos.

Read more
NASA has collected a whopping 121 grams of sample from asteroid Bennu
A view of eight sample trays containing the final material from asteroid Bennu. The dust and rocks were poured into the trays from the top plate of the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) head. 51.2 grams were collected from this pour, bringing the final mass of asteroid sample to 121.6 grams.

When the OSIRIS-REx dropped a capsule in the Utah desert last year, it made headlines around the globe for returning NASA's first sample of an asteroid to Earth. Scientists were eager to get their hands on the sample of asteroid Bennu to learn about the early formation of the solar system, but actually getting at the sample proved to be rather trickier than imagined.

Scientists were able to extract 70 grams of material from the sample canister relatively easily, making it by far the largest asteroid sample ever brought to Earth, but two troublesome fasteners made it difficult to extract the rest of the sample. The team knew it had plenty more sample inside, but it had to be patient as special new tools were constructed that could undo the fasteners without losing a single gram of the precious sample.

Read more