Chinese Observatory Discovers New Asteroid Near Earth Orbit

BEIJING – Observatory Astronomy China’s Xinjiang (XAO) discovers a new near-Earth asteroid. This new asteroid was detected drifting well within a short distance from Earth’s orbit.

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The Center for Minor Planets at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) confirmed the discovery and assigned the near-Earth asteroid the provisional number 2023 DB2.

“The asteroid’s closest distance to Earth’s orbit is more than 30 million km, roughly 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon,” said Ali Esamdin, a researcher at XAO as reported by Xinhua News Sunday (12/3/2023).

This discovery is the result of a collaboration between XAO and a team of amateur astronomers named Xingming.

Gao Xing, the leader of the amateur astronomy team, said that the cooperation between professional astronomers and amateur astronomy teams can reveal more secrets about stars and bring astronomy closer to the general public.

Meanwhile NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have spent considerable time trying to prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth and eliminating life.

The first step is to find out how many asteroids in the solar system might threaten Earth and how big they are.