Largest known asteroid to fly past Earth on THIS date and it's 'potentially hazardous'

The largest-ever known asteroid 2001 F032 will fly past earth on March 21, US-based space agency NASA has said. As per the agency, the asteroid is approximately between 0.767 to 1.714 kilometers in diameter and it is currently approaching the solar system. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has stated 2001 F032 as a “potentially hazardous” asteroid. The world's premier space organisation has described the asteroid as 'Near Earth Object'. The asteroid 231937 or 2001 FO32 is comparable in size to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, US.

“NEOs are comets and asteroids that have been nudged by the gravitational attraction of nearby planets into orbits that allow them to enter the Earth’s neighborhood. The scientific interest in comets and asteroids is due largely to their status as the relatively unchanged remnant debris from the solar system formation process some 4.6 billion years ago." NASA said on its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website.

2001 FO32 falls under the category of potentially hazardous asteroids, as its diameter is estimated to measure between 2,526 feet and 5,577 feet. The asteroid will come within a distance of 1.3 million miles of the Earth.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid's potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.

The US space agency is actively tracking asteroids that are present close to the Earth and numerous such programs scan the sky daily, and with each NEO, scientists observe them closely to understand their path and the possibility of them crossing paths with our planet.

Extrapolations from existing surveys suggest that the number of PHAs larger than 100 m is on the order of 10,000 to 20,000.