A small asteroid will pass very close to Earth tonight, NASA has announced.
The event of this Thursday, January 26 will take place above our heads. A truck-sized asteroid will pass Earth tonight, NASA announced Wednesday. in a press release.
Called 2023 BU, it will follow “one of the closest trajectories to our planet ever recorded”, explained the American space administration, specifying that its course will not cause any danger.
“There is no risk of the asteroid impacting Earth. But even if it did, this small asteroid – estimated to be 11.5 to 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 meters) in diameter – would turn into a ball of fire and disintegrate largely harmlessly into the atmosphere, with some of the larger debris potentially falling as small meteorites,” the space agency’s statement read.
This asteroid had recently been discovered by an amateur astronomer at an observatory in Crimea and is expected to pass close to the southern tip of South America, just 3,600 kilometers from the Earth’s surface, much closer than many geostationary satellites orbiting around it. of the planet.
Last December, another “Near-Earth” (i.e. an asteroid whose orbit is made to cross that of the Earth) nicknamed 2015 RN35 had passed at about 700,000 km, without any incident being observed.
