Asteroid Alert: 110-foot Space Rock to Zoom Past Earth Today – Get the Facts!
NASA has recently announced that an asteroid, known as Asteroid 2023 UO, is expected to come close to Earth today, November 15. The asteroid was identified and monitored using a combination of ground and space telescopes by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Its estimated distance from Earth during this encounter is around 2.4 million kilometers. For more information on the close approach of Asteroid 2023 UO, please refer to the provided details.
Asteroid 2023 UO: Details of the close approach
NASA has revealed that the asteroid is orbiting at a speed of 24,492 kilometers per hour, which is much faster than the speed of a hypersonic ballistic missile! This is not the first time an asteroid has come close to Earth. It first passed the planet on November 16, 1911, when it flew by at a distance of 1.2 million kilometers. According to NASA CNEOS, it will pass the planet at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers on November 6, 2038.
Asteroid 2023 UO belongs to Apollo’s group of Near-Earth Asteroids, which are Earth-crossing space rocks with semimajor axes greater than the Earth’s axis. These asteroids are named after the huge 1862 Apollo asteroid discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.
The asteroid measures nearly 110 feet across, making it almost the size of an airplane. That’s almost twice the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid, which injured 1,400 people and damaged 7,000 buildings when it exploded over the Russian city in 2013.
An asteroid whizzed past Earth
NASA, ESA, and other space agencies have a series of ground-based and space-based telescopes and observatories to monitor and track asteroids. Despite these technological marvels, the asteroid snuck past them all! The asteroid, named Asteroid 2023 NT1, made its closest approach to Earth on July 13th when it came within 60,000 miles of Earth, which is 4 times closer to the Moon! It wasn’t a small rock either, as scientists later revealed that it was nearly 200 feet across, about 4 times the size of the Chelyabinsk asteroid that caused massive damage in Russia. It was finally found by the Asteroid Terrestrials-Impacts Last Alert System (ATLAS) observatory in South Africa on July 15.
