Past Earth flew the largest in the history of the asteroid
MOSCOW, September 1 — RIA Novosti. Florence asteroid the size of a small city, the largest of the approaching to earth for the entire history of observations of NASA, flew past the planet on 1 September on the potentially dangerous distance of 7 million kilometers, causing no injuries, told RIA Novosti head of the laboratory of space monitoring of the State astronomical Institute named after Sternberg, Moscow state University (SAI) Vladimir Lipunov.
“Florence has safely passed. Observers photographed it using robotic telescopes of our network Master, first over the lake, and then over South Africa,” — said the scientist.
According to him, the asteroid approached as close to Earth at a distance of seven million kilometres, about 18 times the distance from our planet to the moon.
As explained senior researcher GAISh Vladimir Surdin, the approach Florence aroused the interest of astronomers around the world. “The event is unique in the sense that such large asteroids we have never studied with sufficient clarity. Nothing wrong with his approach was not as scientific interest, of course, because all of these large far from us fly, and that for the first time approached” — said the scientist.
According to muffler, any asteroid is interesting, because it carries the substance from which formed large planet. “Inside of our planet, we can’t look, there are all buried at great depths, and asteroids is practically the same as the bricks from which once formed the inside of the major planets, we can learn and understand what substance is in the bowels of the Earth,” he said.
The scientist has assured that the distance of 7 million kilometers is quite large, so the danger of Florence to the earth is not represented.
It’s still a distance of 18 times more than from the earth to the moon, then he will miss for sure. But it is this orbit that it is approaching the Earth from time to time, every few millennia, but never crosses the Earth’s orbit and, therefore, may not hit our planet.Vladimir Kurdistani researcher SAI
As previously reported to NASA, Florence became the largest asteroid among the approaching to such a distance to the Ground, which is revealed by the program of NASA’s discovery and tracking of near-earth asteroids. The monitoring and recording of all known asteroids at NASA began in 1998.