The ‘City Killer’ asteroid is closest this weekend. Passes inside the moon’s orbit/NASA/NOAA
2023.03.25 Sat posted at 13:04 JST
（ＣＮＮ） One of the asteroids known as the “City Killer” will make its closest approach to Earth this weekend because it will cause enormous damage if it hits an urban area. However, it will pass safely between the orbits of the Earth and the Moon.
The asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass at a distance of 170,000 kilometers from the Earth on the evening of the 25th in the United States (before dawn on the 26th in Japan). The Moon is about 384,400 kilometers from Earth.
Asteroids range in size from 40 to 100 meters. While the “city killer” isn’t likely to ravage cities as its name suggests, experts say its approach is still noteworthy.
“It’s rare for an object of this size to come so close to Earth, about once every 10 years,” Richard Moisle, head of the planetary defense division at the European Space Agency (ESA), told CNN on the 24th. rice field.
“This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to make precise measurements of a relatively large celestial body from a short distance,” said Moisl.
Experts say they hope to fire radar at 2023 DZ2 and use the results to get more accurate measurements of the asteroid.
According to Moisl, the term “city killer” is used among experts to refer to the last two asteroid impacts.
In 1908, the Tunguska Incident destroyed 2,000 square kilometers of forest in Siberia by a shock wave from an asteroid. About 50,000 years ago, an iron asteroid fell on what is now Arizona, creating a crater with a diameter of 1.2 kilometers and a depth of about 180 meters.
