Anne Virkki, the head of planetary radar at the Arecibo Observatory, wears her face mask with a range-Doppler radar image of asteroid 1998 OR2. An asteroid estimated to be 1.2 miles wide will fly by Earth early Wednesday morning, but it's not expected to collide with our planet., and it was first spotted in 1998. On April 29, it will pass within 3,908,791 miles of Earth, moving at 19,461 miles per hour. That's still 16 times farther than the distance between Earth and the moon.
And if an asteroid could be aware of such things, it appears to be wearing a face mask in deference to the pandemic, according to new images from Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Arecibo Observatory is a National Science Foundation facility managed by the University of Central Florida. A team of experts has been monitoring this near-Earth asteroid, among others. The observatory is supported by NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program and has been analyzing asteroids since the mid-'90s.
The asteroid was classified as a potentially hazardous object because it's bigger than 500 feet and comes within 5 million miles of Earth's orbit. The experts at Arecibo can monitor the asteroids and use observations to determine their path in the future to see if they pose a risk to Earth.
As long as its social distancing from earth, then it's all good.
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HuffPost is now a part of Verizon MediaI don’t think anyone would be surprised if it hit us head on. 2020forthewin
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