Could an asteroid approaching Earth today pose any threat?

Astronomers have reassured the inhabitants of planet Earth as the largest asteroid this year approaches our closest point, that this does not pose any threat.

The US Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had said that the diameter of the asteroid, which is a gigantic rock, which researchers call "2001-FO32", was several hundreds of meters and would approach Earth at a distance of about two million kilometers.

And that distance is five times greater than the distance between the planet and the moon.

"It (the asteroid) is stable, not in a precarious path," Detlev Kuchni, an asteroid expert at the European Space Agency told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, adding that the celestial body would be available for viewing by amateur astronomers with the appropriate equipment.

"We know the orbital path of the asteroid 2001-FO32" around the sun very precisely, since it was discovered before, said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, run by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 20 years and has been tracked ever since.

This asteroid, which orbits the sun once every 810 days, will launch near the Earth at a speed of about 124,000 kilometers per hour.

"NASA" said that the asteroid will continue its journey, and will not approach Earth again until the year 2052. Scientists intend to take advantage of the asteroid's approach to Earth to study it closely.