NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that a large asteroid is about the make one of the closest approaches to Earth ever recorded. The asteroid, named 2023 BU, was discovered on Saturday (January 21) and is roughly the size of a delivery truck.
NASA's Scout impact hazard assessment system determined that the asteroid is unlikely to impact Earth as it buzzes about 2,200 miles above the southern tip of South America.
Even if 2023 BU does enter the Earth's atmosphere, it will harmlessly burn up.
"Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth," said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at JPL, who developed Scout. "In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded."
As the asteroid approaches, Earth's gravity will alter its trajectory and change its orbit around the sun. Instead of circling the sun every 359 days, it will now take 425 days to complete its orbit.