The NASA space agency continues to track the potentially dangerous asteroid 52768 (OR2 1998), which is currently making its way within the solar system and gradually approaching Earth.
The agency's specialists are confident that a space body with a diameter of 4 kilometers does not pose any threat to the Earth. Moreover, its flyby promises to be a grand show and provide astronomers with observing the asteroid directly from Earth and even exploring it in detail with powerful telescopes.
According to preliminary calculations, the asteroid will fly past our planet on April 29 at a distance of 6.29 million kilometers. According to astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, head of the Virtual Telescope project, the asteroid is likely to be bright enough on the night of the flight to be visible even with ordinary telescopes and binoculars:
'Our telescope already tracked the apparent motion of OR2 in 1998. The asteroid is in the center of our image, a clear point of light is visible. When we got this image, the asteroid was about 16.1 million kilometers away from us. '
'This asteroid, with a diameter ranging from 1.8 to 4.1 kilometers, will approach us on April 29 by 6.3 million kilometers, which is more than 16 times the average distance to the Moon. But we're pretty sure it won't hit the Earth – it just gets bright enough to be seen with modest optical equipment. '
Despite the predicted flight trajectory, NASA continues to track their flight. A relatively small number of near-Earth objects pass close enough to Earth and are large enough to ignore observation of them. The gravitational attraction of the planets of the solar system can play a 'cruel joke' and eventually lead to the fact that any of these potentially dangerous objects will cross the orbit of the Earth, which will inevitably lead to a collision with our planet.
