Largest known asteroid to fly past earth in 2021

According to NASA largest known asteroid is going to fly past the earth on March 21. Asteroids are enormous rocks which are classifies as near Earth object (NEO). NEOs are those celestial objects which can potentially take them within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Till now 25,000 NEOs have be identified. NASA studies the path of these asteroids on a regular basis so they can know about their path and discover weather they are hazardous or not. As per NASA, potentially hazardous NEOs are those which have a diameter larger than 460 feet and have orbits approaching Earth’s orbit to within 4.6 million miles.

Due to the gravitational pull of the planets the path of these bodies keep changing which is why it is important to study them because there is always a possibility that over centuries and millennia the changes in their orbits can make them hazardous.

The asteroid which is going to fly pass the Earth on 21st March is known as 2001 FO32. The diameter of this asteroid is is estimated to measure between 2,526 feet and 5,577 feet and it will cross within a distance of 1.3 million miles of the Earth.