Asteroid 2022 AA Closes to Earth on February 4, This Says BRIN

An asteroid the size of half a football field is heading towards Earth. The space rock will pass near Earth in early February 2022.

Despite passing close to Earth, according to the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the asteroid poses no threat to planet Earth. The asteroid was first spotted by the observatory on January 1.

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) under the International Astronomical Union confirmed the discovery of the asteroid and named it 2022 AA, meaning the first near-Earth asteroid discovered in 2022. Since then, observation stations in the United States and Chile have continued watch him closely.

Estimated to be 43 meters wide, the newly discovered space object belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids. These asteroids have orbits that are larger than Earth’s orbits around the sun and their paths intersect with Earth’s orbit.

The Chinese Observatory PMO projects that the asteroid will fly past Earth on February 4.

Zhao Haibin, chief scientist for the Observatory’s Near-Earth Object Telescope program, said the asteroid was heading toward Earth and was expected to approach at a distance of 2.55 million kilometers from Earth’s surface.

“Given the distance, the asteroid will not pose a threat to Earth,” said Zhao.

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