A Massive Asteroid Is About to Whiz Past the Earth and Here

One potentially hazardous asteroid could travel past Earth at 76980 miles per hour. Take a plane, for example, it flies at 575 miles per hour, which is pretty fast. The International Space Station flies at 17100 miles per hour, that is considered very fast. The asteroid 2001 FO32 is about to fly past Earth at 76980 miles per hour, which is incredibly and unimaginably fast.

The asteroid will probably be the largest and fastest near-Earth object to zoom by our planet this year. March 23 at 16:03 UTC is the time and date to witness such a marvelous event. 

2001 FO32 asteroid is not going to crash onto Earth this time around or on its next five passes, which happens every three to five decades. Throughout this flyby, it’ll be about 1.3 million miles from our planet, meaning that it will be about five times as far as the moon. The closest asteroid that’s ever zipped past Earth did so at a loftiness of just 1830 miles, in August 2020. 

As you need not worry about this asteroid finishing our life, you can relax, and enjoy the show as it hurtles through our planetary neighborhood. Because of its size and speed, we might be able to see its movement across the sky in real-time, as long as we use a telescope. Most asteroids are very small and slow, which means they appear stationary, like a star or planet, when looking at them through a lens. But to our eyes (telescoped-eyes), 2001 FO32 could appear like a slower version of a plane at cruising altitude or the International Space Station in orbit.