Asteroid 1998 OR2 to safely fly past Earth this week

Washington D.C.: A large near-Earth asteroid will safely pass by our planet on Wednesday morning, providing astronomers with an exceptional opportunity to study the 1.5-mile-wide (2-kilometer-wide) object in great detail.
The asteroid, called 1998 OR2, will make its closest approach at 5:55 a.m. EDT (2:55 a.m. PDT).
While this is known as a “close approach” by astronomers, it’s still very far away: The asteroid will get no closer than about 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometres), passing more than 16 times farther away than the Moon.
Asteroid 1998 OR2 was discovered by the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in July 1998, and for the past two decades, astronomers have tracked it.
As a result, we understand its orbital trajectory very precisely, and we can say with confidence that this asteroid poses no possibility of impact for at least the next 200 years.
Its next close approach to Earth will occur in 2079 when it will pass by closer — only about four times the lunar distance.