Asteroid 1998 OR2 makes a close pass of Earth

It was close, ok not like in the movie armageddon, but Asteroid 1998 OR2 came within several million kilometres of Earth and NASA says there’s “no possibility of impact for at least the next 200 years.”

The close pass came early this morning at 5:55 a.m. EST. Below is an animated image composed of observations by the Virtual Telescope Project taken five days ago.

This GIF, composed of observations by the Virtual Telescope Project, shows asteroid 1998 OR2 (the central dot) as it traversed the constellation Hydra five days before its closest approach to Earth. It was about 4.4 million miles (7.08 million kilometres) away from Earth at the time. Credits: Dr. Gianluca Masi (Virtual Telescope Project)

The asteroid was was discovered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program in July 1998. It’s just over a 2 kilometres in diameter. In today’s flyby it passed about four times the distance to the moon. The next close pass is expected in 2079.

According to NASA Asteroid 1998 OR2 “is still categorized as a large ‘potentially hazardous asteroid’ because, over the course of millennia, very slight changes in the asteroid’s orbit may cause it to present more of a hazard to Earth than it does now.”