Monday 28 July 2014

Asteroid 2014 OP2 passes the Earth.

Asteroid 2014 OP2 passed by the Earth at a distance of 199 700 km (0.52 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon), at about 8.35 am GMT on Thursday 24 July 2014. There was no danger of the asteroid hitting us, though had it done so it would have presented no threat. 2014 MG6 has an estimated equivalent diameter of 3-9 m (i.e. it is estimated that a spherical object with the same volume would be 3-9 m in diameter), and an object of this size would be expected to break up in the atmosphere between 45 and 32 km above the ground, with only fragmentary material reaching the Earth's surface.

The calculated orbit of 2014 OP2. JPL Small Body Database Browser.

2014 OP2 was discovered on 25 July 2014 (the day after its closest approach to the Earth) by the European Space Agency's Optical Ground Station on Tenerife. The designation 2014 OP2 implies that it was the 65th asteroid (asteroid P2) discovered in the second half of July 2014 (period 2014 O).

2014 OP2 has a 1331 day year orbital period and an eccentric orbit tilted at an angle of 1.8° to the plane of the Solar System, that takes it from 0.93 AU from the Sun (i.e. 93 % of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun) to 3.80 AU from the Sun (i.e. 380% of the average distance at which the Earth orbits the Sun, considerably more than twice the distance at which the planet Mars orbits the Sun). It is therefore classed as an Apollo Group Asteroid (an asteroid that is on average further from the Sun than the Earth, but which does get closer).

See also...


Asteroid 2014 MJ55 passed by the Earth at a distance of about 11 080 000 km (28.83 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 7.4% of the average distance between the Earth and...



Asteroid 2014 MA6 passed by the Earth at a distance of 7 275 000 km (18.93 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 4.9% of the average distance between the Earth and the...



Asteroid 2013 YG passed by the Earth at a distance of 19 190 000 km (49.68 times the average distance between the Earth and the Moon, or 12.7% of the average distance between the Earth and the...


Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.