On Thursday night, one of the closest recorded asteroids will fly past Earth in the size of a delivery truck.
There is no danger of the asteroid impacting Earth, according to NASA, so it will be a close call.
The newly discovered asteroid, according to NASA, will fly 2,200 miles (3,600 kilometers) above the southernmost point of South America. The multitude of communication satellites circling overhead are ten times farther away than that.
At 7:27 p.m. EST, the closest approach will take place (9:27 p.m. local.)
Even if the space rock approached much closer, most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with some of the larger fragments perhaps falling as meteorites, according to scientists.
A strike was promptly ruled out by NASA’s impact hazard assessment system, known as Scout, according to its creator, engineer Davide Farnocchia, who works at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The orbits of geosynchronous satellites are shown in green, the moon’s orbit is shown in light gray, and the anticipated track of asteroid 2023 BU is shown in red.
Once the asteroid flies by, Earth’s gravity will significantly alter its course. According to NASA, it will transition into an elliptical orbit with a 425-day duration rather than rotating around the sun every 359 days.
