March 21st Asteroid to be the largest ever known to fly past Earth

Asteroid 2001 F032, popularly known to be the largest known asteroid, is now going to fly past Earth. This has been confirmed by the US-based space agency, NASA. Because of this, a number of people have been curious to know more about this Asteroid. To help them, we have gathered information about the largest asteroid to fly past Earth. 

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More about March 21 Asteroid 

NASA has now confirmed that the Asteroid is going to pass by Earth on March 21. According to its report, the size of the asteroid is approximately between 0.767 to 1.714 kilometers in diameter. It is approaching our solar system and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has stated that the March 21st asteroid is “potentially hazardous”. The space organisation has also identified the March 21 asteroid as 'Near Earth Object'. 231937 or 2001 FO32 asteroid’s total size can also be compared to the size of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US. Apart from that, NASA has also released a statement about March 21 asteroid on its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website which says, 

“NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago." 

In March 2020, NASA had reported that an SUV-size space rock had flown past our planet. This asteroid was initially discovered by a NASA-funded asteroid survey. It was termed as one of the NEAs i.e. Near earth Asteroids that usually fly past Earth. But this SUV-size asteroid has managed to gain a lot of attention as it had set the record this for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA. According to NASA, the asteroid passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean. This happened exactly on August 16 at 12:08 a.m. EDT. 

Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California said that it is really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bend its trajectory. He also added that their calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it passed by our planet.

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