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A truck-sized asteroid has made one of the closest passes of planet Earth on record.
The small near-Earth asteroid, called 2023 BU, swept past the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. ET Thursday about 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface. This distance was well within the orbit of global satellites.
There was no risk of the asteroid hitting Earth, according to NASA.
If the space rock, which is estimated to be 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) in diameter, had been heading towards Earth, it would have transformed into a ball of fire once it entered the atmosphere and disintegrated. Any remaining debris would have fallen to the ground as small meteorites, according to the space agency.
Amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov spotted the asteroid from the MARGO observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea on Saturday. Borisov had previously discovered interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in 2019.
The Minor Planet Center, which tracks the positions of minor planets, comets and space rocks, also received recent reports of sightings of asteroid 2023 BU. Once enough sightings were recorded, the center announced the discovery of the asteroid. Under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union, the organization is responsible for the identification, designation and orbital data of these celestial objects.
Observatories around the world made new observations after the discovery was announced on Sunday, helping to fine-tune the orbit of 2023 BU.
NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies’ Scout Impact Hazard Assessment System analyzed data from the Minor Planet Center and predicted that the asteroid would miss Earth.
The Center for Near Earth Object Studies, located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, calculates the trajectory of all known near-Earth asteroids to assess their potential impact on our planet.
“Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very sparse sightings, he was still able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth,” said JPL navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia. developed Scout, in a report. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches to a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”
Earth’s gravity alters the trajectory of asteroids, but 2023 BU came so close to our planet that its orbit around the sun changed after the encounter.
Before Thursday’s close pass, the asteroid had a circular orbit that took about 359 days to complete around the sun. Now, scientists estimate that the asteroid’s orbit is elongated, extending that single orbit of the sun to 425 days.
