HONG KONG, January 30. /TASS/. An asteroid nearly five football fields wide will fly past the Earth on Friday, the Taipei Astronomical Museum has reported.

On February 2, an asteroid dubbed 2008 OS7 will pass at a distance of 0.019 astronomical units from Earth (about 2.85 million kilometers) at 10:40 p.m. local time (2:40 p.m. GMT). It travels at a speed of about 18.2 kilometers per second, and is somewhere between 210 and 480 meters in diameter. According to the report, the 2008 OS7 asteroid will pass outside the Earth's atmosphere and poses no threat to the Earth.

2008 OS7 was included in the list of potentially dangerous astronomical objects because its diameter exceeds 140 meters and its trajectory approaches Earth's orbit at a distance of less than 0.05 astronomical units (about 7.5 million km).

A total of 2,349 asteroids are currently on the list of objects that could harm the Earth. The largest of them - asteroid 1999 JM8 - has a diameter of about 7 km. According to the message, in 2024, a total of 18 celestial bodies will pass at a distance of less than 0.05 astronomical units from the Earth.

According to astronomers, the next potentially dangerous celestial body to pass by the Earth will be Apophis (99942 Apophis), which is 370 meters in diameter, on April 14, 2029. The trajectory of its flight will bring it less than 40,000 kilometers from the Earth, the same distance as one of its geostationary satellites.

Astronomers note that only 156 of the more than 2,000 potentially dangerous asteroids and comets are over 1 km wide. If an asteroid of this size were to collide with the Earth, it could lead to dire consequences for life on the planet, up to and including the extinction of all living species. "However, you should not worry, such phenomena occur on average only once in 440,000 years," the authors of the article note.