Asteroid 59 feet in size to fly by Earth today – Get details on speed and more
NASA has announced that an asteroid is en route and its path may bring it close to Earth today, November 1. October saw several instances of asteroids approaching, and it appears that November will continue this pattern. The asteroid, named Asteroid 2023 UZ3, is expected to pass by our planet today. This celestial object was detected by NASA’s Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), which is responsible for monitoring the skies and observing various Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) using a range of telescopes, including the NEOWISE telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Pans-STARRS1, and Catalina Sky Survey.
The space agency has a suite of advanced technologies used to observe and track near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as asteroids, comets and others.
Asteroid 2023 UZ3: Details of the close approach
The asteroid passes the planet at a distance of about one million kilometers and accelerates already at 51814 kilometers per hour, which is even faster than a hypersonic ballistic missile! Despite its blistering speed, this asteroid has not been declared a “Potentially Hazardous Object”. These are celestial bodies that are larger than 492 feet in diameter and pass Earth closer than 7.5 million kilometers. The asteroid measures nearly 59 feet across, making it almost the size of a house!
Amazingly, it’s the same size as the Chelyabinsk asteroid that exploded over the Russian city in 2013, damaging more than 7,000 buildings and injuring around 1,000 people when the impact shattered glass and flew through the city.
The space agency has also revealed that Asteroid 2023 UZ3 belongs to Apollo’s group of Near-Earth Asteroids, which are Earth-crossing space rocks with semi-major axes larger than Earth’s. These asteroids are named after the huge 1862 Apollo asteroid discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.
According to NASA, this is the first time this asteroid has been observed approaching Earth, according to NASA CNEOS. As of today, no close approach is expected in the near future.
