The fly-by asteroid is set to “just miss” Earth according to Laura Tobin
Designated asteroid 231937 (2001 FO32), a piece of space rock, is set to pass by Earth sometime today but, thankfully, zoom just past our atmosphere.
This is according to Good Morning Britain‘s Laura Tobin, who not only shared the usual forecast for today but also news of this noteworthy meteorological event.
Tobin reassured viewers, “I’m here to say don’t panic. It is not going to hit us, but boy is it going to get close.” – most people, presumably, didn’t expect to wake up and hear about a passing asteroid.
“It will pass between us and the moon,” said Tobin. “It will be about 167,000 miles [in diameter] – that’s about one-seventh of the distance between us and the moon.”
While these relative ‘near misses’ are not entirely uncommon – most of us will have seen this kind of story before – this is the largest asteroid to come near Earth this year.
NASA has actually been tracking the asteroid for 20 years and, as such, have measured its flight path very accurately.
Travelling at 77,000mph, the asteroid is not expected to get any closer than “1.25 million miles from Earth”, according to Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
Once again, whilst this is deemed to be a safe distance, relative to astronomical terms, it was classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid” and monitored ever since.
