NASA predicts small asteroid will pass close to Earth

• A truck-sized asteroid measuring 3.5–8.5 metres (11-28 feet) will pass near the southern point of South America on Thursday.
• It will travel just 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometres) above Earth’s surface.
• The asteroid will pass so close to the Sun that its orbit will be dramatically altered.

A truck-sized asteroid will come close to Earth on Thursday, making one of the closest encounters with our planet ever recorded, according to NASA, although it presents no threat.

NASA said the newly discovered asteroid 2023 BU will pass near the southern point of South America at roughly 4:27 p.m. PST on Thursday (0027 GMT Friday).

It will travel just 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometres) above Earth’s surface, which is far closer than many geostationary satellites do.

However, according to NASA, there is no danger of the asteroid colliding with Earth.

Even if it did, the asteroid measuring 3.5–8.5 metres (11-28 feet) across would dissolve in the Earth’s atmosphere, probably leaving only a few small meteorites.

Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer who previously detected an interstellar comet in 2019, discovered it on Saturday from a Crimean observatory.

Observatories all across the world then conducted dozens of observations.

NASA’s Scout impact hazard assessment system decided immediately that the asteroid will miss Earth, according to the US space agency.

“Despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” said NASA’s Davide Farnocchia, who worked on Scout.

“In fact, this is one of the closest approaches ever recorded by a known near-Earth object.”

The asteroid will pass so close to the Sun that its orbit will be dramatically altered.

It used to take the asteroid 359 days to complete its orbit around the Sun, but following its close encounter with Earth, NASA predicts it will now take 425 days.

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