Asteroid earth: Earth will experience closest encounter of Asteroid BU 2023

An asteroid the equivalent of a delivery truck will cross Earth in one of the nearest such interactions ever recorded, passing within a tenth of the distance between the orbits of most communication satellites.

At 7.27 p.m. US eastern time on Thursday, the newly discovered asteroid will pass 2,200 miles (3,600 km) above the southern point of South America, according to Nasa (12.27 am GMT on Friday).

According to Nasa, it would be a close call with no possibility of impacting Earth. Even if it got much closer, most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with larger fragments perhaps falling as meteorites, according to scientists.

According to Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the agency's impact hazard assessment system, Scout, rapidly ruled out a strike.

“But despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

The asteroid 2023 BU, which was found on Saturday, is estimated to measure between 11 feet (3.5 metres) to 28 feet (8.5 metres) in diameter.