Natalia Chi
An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will pass through Earth on Thursday night.
NASA He claims that there is no chance of an asteroid colliding with Earth and that it will be a near miss.
NASA announced Wednesday that the newly discovered asteroid will soar 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) from the southern tip of South America. That’s ten times closer than a swarm of communications satellites orbiting overhead.
The closest time is 7:27 PM ET (9:27 PM local time).
Even if the space rock got closer, scientists said most of it could burn up in the atmosphere and some large pieces could fall as meteorites.
NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out strikes, said its developer Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Despite very few observations, we were able to predict the asteroid coming very close to Earth,” Farnocchia said in a statement. Objects recorded so far.
The asteroid known as 2023 BU, discovered Saturday, is believed to be between 11 feet (3.5 meters) and 28 feet in diameter. It was first discovered by Gennady Borisov, the same Crimean amateur astronomer who discovered the interstellar comet in 2019. Within days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing the asteroid’s orbit to be refined.
The asteroid’s trajectory is significantly altered by Earth’s gravity once it passes. Instead of going around the Sun in 359 days, it will move in an elliptical orbit lasting 425 days, according to NASA.
A spacecraft named DART crashed into an asteroid on Monday, learning how to bypass a potentially deadly celestial body.
