The asteroid blew up near Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, creating a sonic boom that injured more than 1,000 people, Hankey said.
Unlike Chelyabinsk, GN1 posed no risk to people, said Gianluca Masi, founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project.
“Its orbit was known well enough to conclude for sure it was not going to hit us,” he said.
Near encounters like the GN1 asteroid flyby offer scientists a chance to learn more about the space rocks, Masi said.
“These close approaches are precious opportunities to better investigate the smallest objects, which would be too faint if too distant,” he said.
The possibility of collision
NASA is testing to see whether impacting an asteroid will change the direction and speed of it, which could be applied in the future to objects that pose a threat to Earth, the agency said.
Its target is the Didymos asteroid system, which is made of a large asteroid called Didymos, and a smaller asteroid that orbits around it called Dimorphos. NASA’s goal is to hit the smaller asteroid, which will shorten the time it takes for Dimorphos to orbit Didymos by a few minutes, according to the space agency.
The spacecraft is scheduled to hit the asteroid on September 26, NASA said.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the cause of injuries in the wake of the Chelyabinsk Meteor explosion.
