A moving truck is fairly large, right? Think of something that big, up in space, about 2,200 miles from our Earth; just passing by. Today, a huge asteroid has made history, it’s being the closest approach by a near Earth object in recorded history.
According to NASA, Asteroid 2023 BU is 11.5 to 28 feet long, and passed over the southern tip of Chile around 7:27 pm EST. It’s altitude would have been below the orbits of many satellites. Assurances have been given that there was no threat posed to life on Earth,
Gennadiy Borisov, an amateur astronomer from Crimea first spotted Asteroid 2023 BU on January 21. Many observations of the asteroid were reported to Minor Planet Center, a branch of the International Astronomical Union that monitors small space objects, following Borisov’s discovery. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) was able to determine the asteroid would not hit Earth using its “Scout” computer program, which assesses the risk of impacts.
“Scout was able to rule out 2023 BU as an Earth impactor, but it was able to predict the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach to Earth,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near Earth object ever recorded.”
Galactic Junction 