In one of the closest encounters ever observed, an asteroid (Asteroid 2023 BU) the size of a large truck will pass by Earth on Thursday barely 2,200 miles above the planet’s surface, according to astronomers.
According to Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the asteroid 2023 BU will cross the Pacific Ocean west of southern Chile on Thursday afternoon Pacific time. There is no threat posed by the near-Earth object, and no impact is anticipated.
Asteroid 2023 BU Came Extremely Close
Asteroid 2023 BU won’t end up breaking apart, “Dr. Farnocchia stated. “It will fly by Earth quickly, say hi, and then go.” The asteroid would have burnt upon approach and, given its small size, converted into a fireball if it had hit Earth’s orbit. According to Dr. Farnocchia, this will be the fourth-closest approach ever observed. He said that two occurrences occurred in 2020 and one did so in 2021.
Large rocks, asteroids are more difficult to identify than comets, which typically have stunning tails. Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer, discovered 2023 BU on January 21 from his observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea. The Minor Planet Center, a clearinghouse for the measurement of the positions of minor celestial planets, received further observations. In addition, after the discovery was made public, observatories all around the world added to the knowledge, which, according to NASA, helped astronomers fine-tune 2023 BU’s orbit. Scout, a NASA impact hazard assessment system stationed in Southern California, quickly foresaw the near-miss after conducting an analysis of the data.
Perihelion, or the point in an object’s orbit where it is closest to the sun, is used by astronomers to gauge how near an object is heading to Earth. A space object is referred to as a near-Earth object if its perihelion is smaller than 1.3 astronomical units, or the distance between Earth and the sun.
