outer space
The asteroid “2023 DZ2” will pass at 22:49 KSA, at a distance of less than a third of that that separates the Earth from the Moon.
Yesterday, Friday, the European Space Agency announced that a large asteroid will pass between the Earth and the Moon on Saturday, noting that this event, which only happens once every ten years, does not pose any danger and will serve as a training for planetary defense techniques.
The asteroid, dubbed 2023dZ2, is estimated to be between 40 and 70 meters in diameter – large enough to obliterate a large city if it hit Earth.
The head of the Planetary Defense Office at the European Space Agency, Richard Moisel, told “Agence France Presse” that the asteroid will pass at 19:49 GMT (22:49 Saudi time) on Saturday evening “very close” to Earth, that is, at a distance of less than a third of that. that separates the earth from the moon, reassuring at the same time that there is no need for concern.
The asteroid was spotted for the first time on February 27 by an observatory in La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands.
The asteroid will pass about 175,000 km from Earth at a speed of 28,000 km per hour.
An image taken by a telescope on March 22 shows the asteroid “2023 DZ2”.
Small asteroids pass near Earth every day, but the passage of such a large body this close to Earth occurs only once every ten years, according to Moesel.
From this standpoint, the International Asteroid Alert Network decided to take advantage of this convergence, and therefore several tools such as spectrometers and radars will be used to analyze “2023 DZ2”.
Moisel noted that this would serve as an exercise in how the network would “deal with such a threat” in the future.
Calculations of astronomers show that the asteroid will pass again near Earth in 2026, but at a greater distance, and therefore it will not pose any danger of collision with it during the next hundred years at least.
Recently, astronomers discovered an asteroid of a similar size, called “2023 DW”. At the end of February, the probability of this asteroid colliding with Earth in 2046 was one out of 432. However, this possibility decreased according to more accurate calculations, and the danger became non-existent.
Experts point out that the world is no longer defenseless in the face of such a threat. Last year, NASA’s Dart spacecraft was deliberately smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos, about 11 million kilometers from Earth, allowing its trajectory to be diverted.
