London ? Astronomers are carefully monitoring a newly discovered 1.2-mile-wide asteroid to determine whether it is on a collision course with Earth.

Initial calculations indicate there is a chance the asteroid known as 2002 NT7 will hit the Earth on Feb. 1, 2019. But scientists said Wednesday that the calculations are preliminary and the risk to the planet is low.

“The threat is very minimal,” Donald Yeomans, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. “An object of this size would be expected to hit the Earth every few million years, and as we get additional data I think this threat will go away.”

The object was detected on July 9 by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Project in New Mexico. It orbits the sun every 837 days, and NASA scientists predict its path could intersect Earth’s orbit. But they say more observations over the coming months will help them plot its course more accurately.

NASA’s Near Earth Object program gives the asteroid a rating of “1” on the Torino impact hazard scale within a range of “events meriting careful monitoring” but not concern.

Last month an asteroid the size of a soccer field missed the Earth by 75,000 miles less than one-third of the distance to the moon in one of the closest known approaches by objects of its size. Scientists said if it had hit a populated area, it would have released as much energy as a large nuclear weapon.