Asteroid 2001 FO32

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The asteroid “2001 FO32”, the largest asteroid predicted to pass by Earth in 2021, will be at its closest on 21st March 2021.

About 2001 FO32

• It will not come closer than 2 million km to Earth and there is no threat of a collision.
  • 2 million km is equal to 5¼ times the distance from Earth to the Moon, which is considered a close distance in astronomical terms, hence it has been designated a Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs).
    • PHAs are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
• It will pass by at about 124,000 kph, faster than the speed at which most asteroids encounter Earth.
  • The reason for its fast speed is its highly eccentric orbit around the Sun, an orbit that is tilted 39° to Earth’s orbital plane.
  • This orbit takes the asteroid closer to the Sun than Mercury, and twice as far from the Sun as Mars.
  • As 2001 FO32 makes its inner solar system journey, it picks up speed.
• It completes one orbit every 810 days (about 2¼ years).
• It will not come this close to Earth again until 2052, when it will pass by at about 2.8 million km.

                                                                                        (Image Courtesy: JPL)

Significance

• It will provide an opportunity for astronomers to get a more precise understanding of the asteroid’s size and albedo (i.e. how bright, or reflective, its surface is), and a rough idea of its composition.
  • When sunlight hits an asteroid’s surface, minerals in the rock absorb some wavelengths while reflecting others.
  • By studying the spectrum of light reflecting off the surface, astronomers can measure the chemical “fingerprints” of the minerals on the surface of the asteroid.
• Over 95% of near-Earth asteroids have been discovered, tracked, and catalogued. None of the large asteroids in the catalogue has any chance of impacting Earth, still, efforts continue to discover all asteroids that could pose an impact hazard.

Asteroid

• Asteroids, sometimes called minor planets, are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.
• Most of this ancient space rubble can be found orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter within the main asteroid belt.
  • Some asteroids go in front of and behind Jupiter, which are called Trojans.
  • Asteroids that come close to Earth are called Near Earth Objects (NEOs) for short. NASA keeps close watch on these asteroids.
• Asteroids range in size from Vesta (the largest at about 329 miles in diameter) to bodies that are less than 33 feet across. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than that of Earth’s Moon.
• Asteroids are not all round like planets. They have jagged and irregular shapes.
• Structure
  • Most asteroids are made of different kinds of rocks, but some have clays or metals, such as nickel and iron.

(Image Courtesy: LTS)

• NASA Space Missions
  • Several NASA space missions have also flown by and observed asteroids. The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landed on Eros, an asteroid near Earth, in 2001.
  • The Dawn spacecraft traveled to the asteroid belt in 2011 to orbit and study the second largest object there, Vesta.
  • In 2016, NASA launched the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to study Bennu, an asteroid near Earth.
• Detecting Asteroids Mission
  • Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA): This includes NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and Hera Mission.
    • The mission’s target is Didymos, a binary near-Earth asteroid, one of whose bodies is of the size that could pose the most likely significant threat to Earth.
    • DART Mission: NASA in 2018 has announced that it had started the construction of DART, scheduled to be launched in 2021 with an aim to slam into the smaller asteroid of the Didymos system in 2022.
    • Hera Mission: It is the asteroid deflection mission of European Space Agency (ESA) that is scheduled to be launched in 2024 to measure the impact crater produced by the DART collision and study the change in the asteroid’s orbital trajectory. It will arrive at the Didymos system in 2027.

Source: IE