Mile-wide asteroid 1998 OR2 to pass within 3.9m miles of Earth on April 29

Picture: Twitter@AreciboRadar

An asteroid 1998 OR2, which is more than a mile wide, will make a pass by Earth on Wednesday (April 29), although scientists stress that it poses no danger to Earth.

According to astronomers 1998 OR2 will come to about 3.9 million miles away on Wednesday – 16 times further than the distance to the Moon. The space rock was first spotte by NASA in 1998 and Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has been tracking the 1.2 mile-wide asteroid since then.

“The small-scale topographic features such as hills and ridges on one end of asteroid 1998 OR2 are fascinating scientifically,” said Dr Anne Virkki, head of planetary radar at the observatory. “But since we are all thinking about Covid-19 these features make it look like 1998 OR2 remembered to wear a mask,” he added.

Astronomers, at its closest approach, the 1998 OR2, which is around 1.5-mile-wide (2.4 km), will be around 16 times farther from us than the moon is from the Earth. It is to be noted that the moon orbits Earth at an average distance of 385,000 km.

"There are no asteroids which have any significant chance of hitting the Earth that are of any significant size," Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during a pre-recorded "NASA Science Live" webcast. "There are none on our list," he added.

NASA claims to have found and tracked more than 90% of the near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that are least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide and are big enough to cause heavy damage if they hit the earth's surface.

Chodas and Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer and program executive of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, however told Space.com that such relief should not breed complacency.

"Impact of the Earth by an asteroid large enough to do damage at the surface is an extremely rare event, but it's an inevitable event," Johnson said.