The asteroid will have a “very close encounter” with Earth tonight: NPR

Asteroid 2023 BU will move 2,200 miles above Earth’s surface Thursday night. Its trajectory is shown here in an image from NASA’s Scout Impact Risk Assessment System. The moon’s path is in grey.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Asteroid 2023 BU will move 2,200 miles above Earth’s surface Thursday night. Its trajectory is shown here in an image from NASA’s Scout Impact Risk Assessment System. The moon’s path is in grey.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA says there’s no reason to panic — the asteroid will shoot harmlessly in front of our planet Thursday night. However, the space agency says the object — about the size of a large moving truck — will make one of the closest approaches to Earth ever when it zips over the southern hemisphere.

NASA prescribe it as a “very close encounter with our planet”.

NASA said the asteroid, dubbed 2023 BU, will be just 2,200 miles above Earth’s surface when it passes over the southern edge of South America at 7:27 p.m. ET.

For comparison, that’s a little shorter than a straight-line trip from New York City to Las Vegas, which is about 2,230 miles. through the air.

David Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the agency says Announce the close section.

Even if it hits our planet – which will not happen, as scientists repeat – the main impact of the small asteroid will be visual, as it will turn into a fireball in our atmosphere, with the possibility of some debris falling in the form of small meteorites.

The asteroid will arrive in a short time: 2023 BU was discovered on Saturday by the Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov, who was previously credited with Discover a number of comets and asteroidsincluding the first confirmed Interstellar comet.

NASA’s Scouting SystemBU 2023 will not hit Earth but “extraordinarily close,” said Farnocchia, who developed the system, which assesses potential risks.

News of the looming visit comes at a time when NASA has put a new focus on planetary defence, spotting and analyzing objects that could pose an impact hazard. Last year, even I tested a plan just in case To deflect an asteroid, should one day become necessary to redirect an object away from Earth.

2023 BU is much smaller than many of the other nearby asteroids that have grabbed headlines in recent years. One of which was “The size of two Rose Bowl stadiums.” But this asteroid is also getting very close to our planet: some of these other objects are still tens or hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Visiting the asteroid will bring it within the cloud of geosynchronous satellites around the Earth, as it is about 10 times closer to the surface of the planet than those objects, which Maintain an elevated orbit.