Thursday, January 26, 2023 | 11:15 a.m.
The United States space agency (NASA) has warned that a truck-sized asteroid will pass close to Earth on Thursday night, one of the closest such encounters ever recorded.
Phenomenon without possibility of impact
NASA specified, however, that it will be an overflight without the possibility of impact with Earth. The celestial object, identified as 2023 BU, will pass 3,600 kilometers above the southern tip of South America and the closest point will take place at 9:27 p.m., they indicated. That distance is 10 times closer than the group of communication satellites orbiting the planet.
The asteroid measures between 3.5 and 8.5 meters across, which if it came much closer than NASA predicted, scientists say it would burn up in the atmosphere with only some of the largest chunks They could fall like meteorites.
NASA’s impact risk assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a collision, said its developer, David Farnocchia, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“But despite very few observations, he was able to predict that the asteroid will come extraordinarily close to Earth,” Farnocchia said in a statement. “In fact, it is one of the closest approaches of a near-Earth object ever recorded,” she added.
According to NASA, instead of going around the Sun every 359 days, it will move in an oval orbit that will last 425 days.
