Comparable in size to the Golden Gate Bridge, asteroid 231937 or 2001 FO32, will pass within 2,016,351 km of Earth in 2021. Video: Watch asteroid 2001 FO32 move across the night sky. "The last notably large asteroid close approach was that of 1998 OR2 on April 29, 2020. The asteroid 2001 FO32 is seen as it appeared on March 16, 2021 ahead of a close flyby on March 21 in this telescope image by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! Asteroid 2001 FO32 is actually one of two  asteroids passing by Earth today, according to NASA's Asteroid Watch website that lists such flybys. Al Jazeera Centre for Public Liberties & Human Rights. "Currently little is known about this object, so the very close encounter provides an outstanding opportunity to learn a great deal about this asteroid.". The asteroid… Author: Douglas Jones 2021-03-21T08:51:25.785Z. It won't come this close to Earth again until 2052. Asteroid 2021 EQ3 will pass closer than the moon. Largest near-Earth asteroid of 2021 makes its closest approach Sunday. Asteroid 2001 F032 was first spotted in 2001 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program in Socorro, New Mexico. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, The second asteroid, called 2021 FH1, is about 97 feet (30 m) wide and will pass Earth at a distance of 973,000 miles (1.5 million km). . It's also different than 2001 FO32, which is an absolute monster with a diameter around a mile. Observations by NASA's NEOWISE space telescope suggest the asteroid is between 1,300 and 2,230 feet (440 to 680 m) wide. The biggest asteroid to visit Earth in 2021 zooms by our planet unusually fast today By Tariq Malik 21 March 2021 Asteroid 2001 FO32 is moving at … "We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since," said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) overseen by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. The largest asteroid to visit Earth this year is the zoomimg of our planet today (March 21) and it is a true demon of speed. Images beamed back to ground control revealed it caught more material than scientists anticipated. It will zip by from a safe distance on Sunday, according to NASA. You can watch the broadcast, for example, on the Virtual Telescope Project resource. There’s no need to worry, however. They may also use NASA's Deep Space Network of radio dishes to bounce signals off asteroid 2001 FO32 to measure its orbit, how fast it spins and even determine some surface features like craters. © The distance is about five times the distance from Earth to the Moon and there's no threat of a collision. Thank you for signing up to Space. NASA and astronomers around the world regularly seek and track asteroids that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. The celestial body with the name 2001 FO32 and a diameter of a few hundred meters approaches the earth 'close to', up to about 2 million kilometers, according to the US space agency NASA. There was a problem. “We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,” said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. 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