A massive asteroid the size of a London bus will fly 2,100 miles from Earth this week

A-sized asteroid London The bus will make its fourth-ever closest approach to Earth this week.

The space rock, known as 2023 BU, has only been discovered before NASA last weekend but is due to be 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from our planet’s surface on Friday (January 27) at about 00:30 GMT (19:30 ET Thursday).

Most asteroids pass beyond the Moon’s distance — which is 240,000 miles — but this one is much closer and will be the closest for about 300 years.

The object is about half the size of the famous Chelyabinsk meteorite that hit Earth in 2013.

The asteroid is slated to make the fourth closest pass of more than 35,000 approaches to Earth in the past and future, according to NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which maintains data covering the period from 1900 to 2200.

Live broadcast , It is hosted by the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP) in ItalyIt will be available for people to watch the event from 19:15 GMT (14:15 ET) on Thursday.

This would be the only way to see the asteroid – 2023 BU is so small that it will shine at a maximum magnitude of 11.3, and is too faint to see with the naked eye.

Instead, it should be captured by large, powerful telescopes, such as the 14-inch and 17-inch instrumental telescopes at Ceccano.

The space rock will race across Earth at 33,000 miles per hour at a distance of 6,500 miles (10,500 km) from the center of our planet and 2,100 miles (3,400 km) from the surface.

It measures approximately 12.4 x 27.8 feet, the same size as the original Routemaster London bus.

Although it was spotted just five days ago, experts have calculated its orbit and insist there is no chance of 2023 BU hitting Earth on this particular approach.

However, even if it does, there’s a good chance it won’t make it to the surface.

NASA says space rocks less than 82 feet (25 meters) in diameter are most likely to burn up if they enter Earth’s atmosphere, causing little or no harm on Earth.

Although it won’t impact us, by some definitions, the asteroid will technically pass through the upper region of our planet’s atmosphere, which is known as the “exosphere.”

This is said to extend from about 6,000 miles (10,000 km) to a maximum distance of 120,000 miles (193,000 km) above Earth.

However, most scientists do not consider this region to be a true part of Earth’s atmosphere because the air is so thin.

However, asteroid 2023 BU will pass well inside the geostationary satellite’s orbit over South America, but it will still be 250 miles (400 km) from Earth from the International Space Station.

Astronomer Gennady Borisov discovered the space rock at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Naochny, Crimea on Saturday.

He is best known for spotting the first comet ever seen and traveling into the solar system from interstellar space, called 2I/Borisov.

2023 BU orbits the Sun every 425 days, while its path occasionally intersects with Earth’s orbital path around our star.

The next one will pass relatively close to us on December 6, 2036, but on that occasion it will be far beyond the moon’s orbit.

NASA considers the asteroid a “near-Earth object” (NEO) because its orbit sees it as 120 million miles (195 million km) from the sun, but it’s not a “dangerous asteroid” because Not big enough to cause significant damage in a crash.

In February 2013, a meteor that shot through the southern Urals and fell in Chelyabinsk, Russia was the largest meteor strike on record in over a century.

More than 1,600 people were injured by the shock wave from the explosion, the power of which was estimated at twenty atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, when it fell near the city.

The fireball, 60 feet (19 meters) in diameter, shrieked through Earth’s atmosphere at 41,600 miles per hour and much of it fell into a local lake called Chebarkul.

Last year, experts warned that some asteroids It can “creep up” to us thanks to an anomaly in the Earth’s rotation Which makes them look like they’re barely moving – making them hard to spot.

In fact, they said, up to half of the asteroids that approach Earth from a danger zone east of “opposition” have periods of apparent slow motion.

NASA-funded experts investigated how telescopes nearly missed a 328-foot-wide asteroid that came 43,500 miles from Earth in 2019.