The asteroid, named 2021 GT2, is predicted to fly safely past our planet at a distance of 3.5 million km.
Astronomers first discovered an asteroid in the pastyear and estimated its size to range from 37 to 83 m in width. It is comparable to one to three whales longer than the blue whale. Still, that's not big enough for the 2021 GT2 to be considered potentially dangerous to Earth.
2021 GT2 is an Aten-class asteroid, which meansit orbits the Sun closer than Earth, and its orbital path intersects the planet’s orbit. Astronomers know of more than 1,800 such objects, many of which are considered potentially dangerous.
After June 6, the next approach to Earth will occur on January 26, 2034, when the asteroid will pass within 14.5 million km of our planet.
An asteroid is considered a near-Earth object ifflies within 1.3 astronomical units from the Sun. An astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, about 149.6 million km. NASA tracks tens of thousands of these objects, predicting the trajectories of each of them. At the moment, astronomers do not believe that any near-Earth objects pose a threat to the Earth.
Nevertheless, scientists are always readyto the fact that the trajectory of an asteroid approaching the Earth will suddenly change after an unexpected incident - say, one of them will collide with another.
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