The largest asteroid that flew on Earth in 2021 “potentially dangerous”

Mark your calendars, boys, because the largest known asteroid in 2021 will pass through Earth on March 21 and is said to be “potentially dangerous.”

The space rock – known as the 2001 FO32 – is one of many objects near Earth (NEO) orbiting the sun, just as our planet does.

NEOs are usually less than 30 million miles away – just to put this in context, the distance around the Earth to the Equator is only short of 25,000 miles, so NEOs are a long very far.

According to NASA, there are about 25,000 identified NEOs and over 2,100 are classified as “potentially dangerous” – just like the March 21 asteroid.

According to Newsweek, potentially dangerous NEOs are those with orbits that approach the Earth’s own orbit around the Sun up to 4.6 million miles, while also measuring more than about 460 meters in diameter.

It appears that the 2001 FO32 meets both criteria to make it “potentially dangerous”, but it seems that this is only the case, so that they can be tracked “for decades” to “study how their orbits could evolve”, according CNEOS director Paul Chodas.

NASA’s California Jet Propulsion Laboratory estimates it measures between 2,526 feet (0.47 miles) and 5,577 feet (1.05 miles) in diameter.

If you still need to calm down, NASA said the potentially dangerous asteroids are “defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening approaches close to Earth.”

NASA continued: “Specifically, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) of 0.05 or less are considered PHA.

“Occasionally, the orbital paths of asteroids are influenced by the gravitational pull of the planets, which causes their paths to change.

“Scientists believe that stray asteroids or fragments from previous collisions have hit Earth in the past, playing a major role in the evolution of our planet.”

According to reports, the asteroid will be about 1.2 million miles away from Earth at 11.03 am ET (which is 4.03 pm GMT).