Asteroid 2023 BU will streak about 2,200 miles above the Earth’s floor on Thursday night time. Its path is seen right here in a picture from NASA’s Scout influence hazard evaluation system. The moon’s path is in grey.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
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NASA/JPL-Caltech
Asteroid 2023 BU will streak about 2,200 miles above the Earth’s floor on Thursday night time. Its path is seen right here in a picture from NASA’s Scout influence hazard evaluation system. The moon’s path is in grey.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
There was no cause to panic — an asteroid shot previous our planet harmlessly Thursday night time, NASA says. The area company says the item — the dimensions of a giant transferring truck — made one of many closest approaches to Earth ever when it zipped over the Southern Hemisphere.
NASA described it as “a really shut encounter with our planet.”
The asteroid, dubbed 2023 BU, was solely 2,200 miles above the Earth’s floor when it handed over South America’s southern edge at 7:27 p.m. ET, NASA says.
For comparability, that is somewhat shorter than a straight-line journey from New York Metropolis to Las Vegas, which is about 2,230 miles via the air.
“The truth is, this is among the closest approaches by a identified near-Earth object ever recorded,” mentioned Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, because the company introduced the shut passage.
Even when it did hit our planet, the small asteroid’s major impact could be visible, as it might turn into a fireball in our environment, with some particles doubtless falling as small meteorites.
The asteroid arrived on quick discover: 2023 BU was simply found on Saturday by Crimean beginner astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who has beforehand been credited with discovering quite a few comets and asteroids, together with the primary confirmed interstellar comet.
NASA’s Scout system, which assesses potential hazards, rapidly decided that 2023 BU would not hit Earth however “make a very shut strategy,” mentioned Farnocchia, who developed the system.
Information of the go to comes at a time when NASA has put new emphasis on planetary protection, detecting and analyzing objects that might pose an influence hazard. Final 12 months, it even examined a just-in-case plan to ram an asteroid, if it sometime turns into essential to redirect an object away from Earth.
2023 BU is far smaller than many different close-passing asteroids which have made headlines in recent times, certainly one of which was “the dimensions of two Rose Bowl stadiums.” However this asteroid can also be coming a lot nearer to our planet: a few of these different objects stayed tens or a whole lot of hundreds of miles away.
The asteroid’s go to introduced it properly throughout the cloud of geosynchronous satellites round Earth, getting round 10 instances nearer to the planet’s floor than these objects, which preserve a excessive orbit.
