Artist’s impression of a large space rock.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
An asteroid the size of a mountain that crossed our cosmic neighborhood on Wednesday, and humanity has survived because even a narrow pass in space is not so close.
Actually, Asteroid 1998 OR2 was never closer than 6.3 million kilometers (3.9 million miles), more than 16 times farther than the moon.
Nevertheless, OR2 was a rare monster of a space rock with a width of 2 kilometers in 1998. It was large enough to allow a number of astronomers to catch it when it took a little foray into our domain.
Asteroid 1998 OR2 (the central point) when it crossed the constellation Hydra five days before its closest approach to Earth. At that time, it was approximately 7.08 million kilometers from Earth.
Virtual telescope project
The object approached the Pacific at 2:55 a.m. and surged back into the deeper space. This is the first close approach of such a large asteroid since 2017.
Interestingly, this week in space was also interrupted by a handful of much smaller asteroids that came much closer to our planet. According to NASA databaseIn the past seven days, at least five asteroids have come closer to our planet than the moon.
None of these asteroids was much larger than a house, but one – Asteroid 2020HS7 – came almost as close as geosynchronous orbitwhere many of our larger satellites hang out.
We have visitors so close several times a year that we really don’t have to worry, but it’s always worth keeping an eye (and lots of telescopes) on the sky.