Here’s everything to know about closest ever asteroid to pass Earth

Surprisingly, this asteroid was discovered only a few days before it would pass the earth.

Hyderabad: Called 2023 BU, an asteroid zoomed through the Earth in one of the closest approaches on Thursday.

It is said that the asteroid is the size of a truck and zipped by around 3,600 kilometres above the tip of South America. The asteroid, like predicted, did not hit the Earth.

---

NASA which made the predictions credited its Scout impact hazard assessment system with ruling out a possible collision. Had it hit the Earth, an asteroid of that size would have burnt up 30 kilometres of the area even before it hit the ground.

2023 BU is said to be between 3.5 metres and 8.5 metres, and was first pointed out by an amateur astronomer in Crimea named Gennady Borisov, who also discovered an interstellar comet in 2019.

The asteroid came close enough to the Earth that its trajectory was altered by the planet’s gravitational pull. Had it not been for that, the asteroid would have taken 359 days to orbit the sun. After the near-encounter with Earth, its orbit is expected to increase to 425 days.

Surprisingly, this asteroid was discovered only a few days before it would pass the earth. Apparently, most smaller asteroids are usually ignored and the tech to detect them is not very sophisticated.

However, according to experts, we are getting better at tracking these smaller asteroids as the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies has already found over 18,000 asteroids smaller than 100 metres.