Gennady Borisov watches the sky as a hobby. On Saturday January 21 he indulged in this passion in his MARGO observatory in the Crimea, when he suddenly noticed a considerable size an asteroidapproaching the Earth. The amateur astronomer immediately notified the international institutions that measure the position of small celestial bodies of his discovery. She also became interested in it NASA.
NASA: Asteroid 2023 BU has passed close to Earth
“There is no risk of an asteroid hitting the Earth” – scientists assessed z NASA. In addition, they estimated that the asteroid is between 3.5 and 8.5 meters in diameter, according to them meantthat even if they are wrong and it hits the Earth it will “turn into a ball fire, which will largely disintegrate harmlessly in the atmosphere, with some of the larger pieces potentially falling as small ones meteorites“.
In the end, NASA was right. The asteroid – dubbed 2023 BU – passed the Earth on the night of Thursday to Friday Polish time. at one point there were only 3,600 kilometers above the surface of the planet. Prof. Don Pollacco of the University of Warwick in interview with the BBC explained that the asteroid passed our planet only 1 percent. odleg³o¶ci do moon.
“In fact, this is one of the closest asteroid approaches to Earth ever recorded,” said Davide Farnocchia, an engineer who developed Scout, NASA’s impact hazard assessment system.
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Earth’s gravity affected the asteroid’s orbit
Prof. Don Pollacco explained that “the asteroid must have passed the Earth thousands of times before.” In turn, NASA explained that 2023 BU came so close that its trajectory of rotation around it changed sun
“Before the encounter with the Earth, the asteroid’s orbit around the Sun was roughly circular, similar to that of the Earth, and took 359 days to complete a revolution around the Sun. After the encounter, the asteroid’s orbit will be more elongated, moving to about halfway between Earth’s and Earth’s orbits. Marsa at its furthest point from the Sun. The asteroid will then complete one orbit every 425 days,” NASA explains.
