Large stadium-size asteroid safely drifts past Earth

On February 2, a large asteroid, roughly between 650 to 1,640 feet (200 to 500 meters) wide, made its close approach to Earth. During this close encounter, the asteroid, named 2008 OS7, was at a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers) from our planet.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory used the powerful 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone Solar System Radar antenna near Barstow, California, to image the asteroid to determine better the size, rotation, shape, and surface details of this near-Earth object (NEO).

The scientists found that the surface of asteroid 2008 OS7 has a mix of rounded and more angular regions with a small concavity and that the asteroid is smaller than previously estimated - about 500 to 650 feet (150 to 200 meters) wide. They also confirmed its uncommonly slow rotation.

A large asteroid safely drifted past Earth at about 2.9 million km on Feb. 2 – and JPL scientists used a powerful radio antenna at the Deep Space Network's Goldstone facility in California to image its slow rotation, size, shape, and surface: https://t.co/xCekdXj5Ro pic.twitter.com/A7w461YmpT

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) February 26, 2024

Discovered in July 2008, Asteroid 2008 OS7 is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid due to its size and proximity of its orbit to Earth. It was initially detected during routine search operations for NEOs by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey.

According to NASA, the February 2 flyby is the nearest the stadium-size asteroid will come to our planet for at least 200 years.