'
The flyby will happen on April 29, when the space rock, which is anywhere from 1.1 miles to 2.5 miles wide, will whiz past us, reports CNN. (Getty Images/iStock)
Mother Earth is all set to greet an old friend next month.
While the planet reels in corona mania, space continues apace, hurling rocks at us.
Luckily, the biggest ones miss.
As will next month’s offering, asteroid 52768 (1998 OR2), NASA says.
The flyby will happen on April 29, when the space rock, which is anywhere from 1.1 miles to 2.5 miles wide, will whiz past us at 4:56 a.m., reports CNN.
Back when it was discovered in 1998, NASA deemed it “large enough to cause global effects,” meaning it could blast what passes for human civilization to smithereens.
However, that is not in the offing.
It’s just one of many that pass through Earth’s route around the sun, but they don’t seem inclined to intersect with our actual planet, as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory pointed out when 52768 was discovered, along with another that is not currently paying us a visit.
Both 1998 OR2 and 1998 OH, discovered the same year, are classified as “potentially hazardous objects” because they, like at least 125 other objects that we know about, pass periodically near Earth’s orbit, NASA said at the time.
They don’t travel in pairs, so only 1998 OR2 is nigh. And NASA has already calculated that 1998 OH will never come closer to Earth than 3 million miles, which is about 12 times the distance between Earth and moon.
The current asteroid is only classified as a “potentially hazardous object” because of its size and its proximity to Earth’s orbit, rather than being keyed to the likelihood that it will intersect with Earth itself, NASA said.
