A relatively small asteroid about 100 feet (30 metres) in diameter, which flew past Earth two years ago at a safe distance of about 1.3 million miles (2 million km), will once again fly by our planet, only this time, it may get much closer.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Asteroid 2013 TX68 can come as close as 11,000 miles (17,000 km) away from the Earth when it makes a second fly-by on March 5 this year.
It could, however, also go as far as 9 million miles (14 million km) away from our planet. Space scientists are having a hard time projecting what distance the asteroid will do its fly-by due to its "weird orbit."
"This asteroid's orbit is quite uncertain, and it will be hard to predict where to look for it," Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, explained in a statement posted on the space agency's website.
"There is a chance that the asteroid will be picked up by our asteroid search telescopes when it safely flies past us next month, providing us with data to more precisely define its orbit around the sun," he added.
In addition to this, Asteroid 2013 TX68 was only tracked for a short time after its discovery, making it hard for space scientists to determine its precise orbit around the sun.
The asteroid was first spotted on Oct. 6, 2013 by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey as it approached our planet on the nighttime side. It passed the Earth's daytime side after its discovery and could no longer be observed.
Nevertheless, NASA assured that Asteroid 2013 TX68 will not bring about the apocalypse here on Earth. The space object actually has a 1-in-250-million odds of making closer contact with our planet in September 2017.
"The possibilities of collision on any of the three future flyby dates are far too small to be of any real concern. I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more," Chodas said.
