The Pin
March 31 2020, 12:20 pm
On April 29, an asteroid estimated between 1.7 kilometers long and 4.1 kilometers wide will fly over Earth. But it is not expected to collide with our planet, fortunately. If it does, the asteroid is “big enough to cause global effects,” NASA said when it was first discovered.
The asteroid is called 52768 (1998 OR2) and was first seen in 1998. It will pass 6.29 million km from Earth, moving more than 31,000 km / h.
The flyby is expected to occur on Wednesday, April 29 at 4:56 a.m. ET, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, which tracks bodies or elements that could collide with Earth.
The asteroid was classified as a potentially dangerous object because it passes close to Earth’s orbit, but is currently not on NASA’s list of possible future Earth impact events. Those are grouped together and monitored by NASA’s Sentry System, “a highly automated collision monitoring system that continually scans the most current asteroid catalog for possibilities of future impact with Earth in the next 100 years.”
It is the largest asteroid expected to fly across Earth in the next two months, but it is not the largest.
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