A bus-sized asteroid will fly close to Earth this week

Latest News, International – An asteroid the size of a city bus will make its fourth closest approach to Earth on record this week.

Reported from Dailymail.co.uk on February 11, the space rock, known as 2023 BU, was only discovered by NASA this past weekend but is expected to be within 2,100 miles (3,400 km) of our planet’s surface this week.

Most of the asteroids pass by the moon’s distance of 240,000 miles but this one is much closer and will be the closest for 300 years.

The object is about half the size of the famous Chelyabinsk meteor that hit Earth in 2013.

The asteroid will make the fourth closest pass of more than 35,000 past and future Earth approaches, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which maintains data covering the period 1900 to 2200.

Asteroid 2023 BU is so small that it will glow with a maximum magnitude of 11.3, which is too faint to see with the naked eye.

Instead, it has to be picked up by a hefty telescope, like the 14-inch and 17-inch VTP robots at Ceccano.

The space rock will hurtle past Earth at 33,000 mph at a distance of 6,500 miles (10,500 km) from the center of our planet and 2,100 miles (3,400 km) from the surface.

It measures approximately 12.4 by 27.8 feet, which is roughly the same size as a real London Routemaster bus.

Although it was only spotted five days ago, experts have calculated its orbit and insist there is no chance of 2023 BU hitting Earth with this particular approach.

However, even if it did, there was a high chance it would not make it to the surface.

Space rocks smaller than 82 feet (25 meters) will likely burn up if they enter Earth’s atmosphere, NASA says, causing little to no damage on the ground.

While it won’t impact us, by some definitions, an asteroid will technically pass through the uppermost region of our planet’s atmosphere, known as the ‘exosphere’.

It is said to extend from about 6,000 miles (10,000 km) to a maximum distance of 120,000 miles (193,000 km) above Earth.

However, most scientists do not consider this region to be a true part of Earth’s atmosphere because the air is so thin.

However, asteroid 2023 BU will pass well in a geostationary satellite orbit over South America, but will still be far from the International Space Station at a distance of 250 miles (400 km) from Earth.

The space rock was discovered by astronomer Gennadiy Borisov at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnyi, Crimea on Saturday.

He is best known for discovering the first comet ever seen to travel into the solar system from interstellar space, called 2I/Borisov.

2023 BU orbits the sun every 425 days, while its path occasionally intersects that of Earth’s orbit around our star.

It will then pass relatively close to us on December 6, 2036, but on that occasion will extend far beyond the orbit of the moon.

NASA considers the asteroid to be a ‘near-Earth object’ (NEO) because its orbit sees it within 120 million miles (195 million km) of the sun, but it is not a ‘potentially hazardous asteroid’ because it is not large enough to cause significant damage if it occurs. clash.

In February 2013, a meteor flashed across the southern Urals and descended on Chelyabinsk, Russia in the largest recorded meteor strike in over a century.

More than 1,600 people were injured by the shockwave from the explosion, estimated to be as powerful as 20 of the Hiroshima atomic bombs, as it landed near the city.

The fireball, measuring 60 feet (19 meters), screamed into Earth’s atmosphere at 41,600 mph and mostly landed in a local lake called Chebarkul.