Asteroid 2022 OE2, with a diameter of 170 – 380 meters, is heading towards Earth with a closest approach expected to be 5.15 million kilometers away.
2022 OE2, an asteroid several hundred meters in diameter, will come close to Earth at 7:23 AM on August 4, according to data from NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). The closest distance between 2022 OE2 and Earth is 5.15 million kilometers, which is about 13 times the average distance between Earth and the Moon, hence no collision is expected.
Illustration of an asteroid flying in space. (Photo: iStock)
Asteroids are rocky bodies that orbit the Sun, similar to planets but significantly smaller. Estimating the size of asteroids is a challenging task because astronomers often have to rely on their brightness in the sky.
“The larger the asteroid, the more light it reflects, and the brighter it appears. However, this requires assumptions about the reflectivity of the material it is made of. Coupled with some other complex factors, the actual size of an object can differ significantly from the estimated value,” explained Greg Brown, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the UK.
Due to many unknown factors, astronomers often publish estimated sizes as a range; in the case of 2022 OE2, the estimate is between 170 and 380 meters. According to CNEOS data, this asteroid will travel at an astonishing speed of 116,000 km/h.
2022 OE2 is one of over 29,000 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) discovered by scientists to date, most of which are classified as asteroids. The term NEO refers to celestial bodies that approach the blue planet within about 48 million kilometers.
Scientists discovered 2022 OE2 on July 26, just a few days before its approach to Earth. NEOs can be quite challenging to detect, partly because they are relatively small and dim compared to other objects in the sky.
