The Valentine's Day asteroid arrives:'flyby' passage on 14 February

Although it is classified by NASA as 'potentially dangerous', there is no risk to Earth

ROME – Even the sky celebrates Valentine's Day.It's scheduled for today, February 14th at 12.00 approximately, the flyby of 2024 BR4, nicknamed the Valentine's Day asteroid.The space rock was discovered just a few weeks ago, and will make a flyby to the safe distance of 4.6 million kilometers (about 12 times the average Earth-Moon distance).Obviously, there is no risk to the Earth.

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THE VALENTINE'S ASTEROID

Discovered on January 30 by the Catalina Sky Survey, this space rock, from diameter estimated between 140-300 meters, belongs to the group of Apollo, Neo asteroids (Near Earth Object) characterized by orbits that extend beyond that of the Earth, intersecting with ours.The meteor that exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk on February 15, 2013 it belonged to this group of celestial bodies.

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Even if it's not about to hit Earth, 2024 Br4 is classified as 'potentially dangerous' (Pha).This term refers to any Neo large in size (wider than 150 metres), cataloged on the basis of parameters that measure the potential threat of their orbit.In particular, all asteroids with a minimum orbit intersection distance of 7,479,893 km or less are considered Pha.

To date, there are just over 2,200 asteroids classified as Pha (about 9% of the total near-Earth population).Of these, currently only 22 are listed in the 'risk table' by Sentry (Sentry Risk Table), NASA's monitoring system that scans the catalog of asteroids for possible future impacts with Earth in the next 100 years.