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An asteroid as large as the Golden Gate Bridge is long will roll down Earth next month. But although it’s the biggest and fastest asteroid to fly on our planet this year, there’s no reason to panic.
The space rock, officially called 231937 (2001 FO32), is about 0.5 to 1 mile (0.8 to 1.7 km) in diameter and will be found within 1.25 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Earth at 11:03 a.m. EST (4:03 p.m. GMT). March 21 – close enough and large enough to be classified as “potentially dangerous”, according to a database published by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
An asteroid is referred to as “potentially dangerous” when its orbit intersects that of Earth at a distance not exceeding 7.5 million km (4.65 million miles) and its diameter exceeds about 140 meters, according to the Center of the NASA for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
Related: The 7 strangest asteroids: strange space rocks in our solar system
Small asteroids pass between Earth and the Moon several times a month, and their fragments enter and break in the Earth’s atmosphere almost daily, according to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).
Telescopes in New Mexico that are part of the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program – a program at MIT Lincoln Laboratory funded by the US Air Force and NASA – detected the asteroid on March 23, 2001, according to Earthsky. Since then, the observatories have been monitoring it. Scientists used these observations to calculate the asteroid’s orbit and determine how far the space rock will approach Earth when it passes nearly 124,000 km / h.
No known asteroids pose a significant risk to Earth for the next 100 years. The biggest threat currently known is an asteroid called (410777) 2009 FD, which has a 1 in 714 (less than 0.2%) chance of hitting Earth in 2185, according to NASA PDCO.
NASA is studying methods to deflect asteroids that end up on a collision course with Earth, for example by using the gravity a flying spaceship to slowly remove asteroids from their path at a safe distance, according to NASA PDCO.
If you have a telescope with an opening of at least 8 inches (20 centimeters), you may be able to spot the fast moving space rock, according to EarthSky. To get a glimpse of the southern United States, point your telescope south-southeast between the constellations of Sagittarius and Corona Australis at 4:45 a.m. EST on March 20.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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