It was close – but our planet was missed by an asteroid that was closer to us than the moon. You can watch the flyby in the video.
Munich – The asteroid 2023 EY approached Earth last Friday (March 17, 2023). He was even closer to us than the moon. Impacts of asteroids of comparable size have injured people in the past. But this time it didn’t come to that.
Asteroid flies close to Earth – video shows flyby
Because: 2023 EY raced past the earth at a distance of 240,000 kilometers. A distance that corresponds to about two-thirds of the distance from Earth to our satellite. Nevertheless, things got exciting on Friday at 1.35 a.m. Although the asteroid could not be seen with the naked eye, it could be seen with the help of telescopes. Friday’s flyby was seen online by the Virtual Telescope Project. The website uses images from a robotic telescope in Cerrano, Italy.
On March 13, 2023 EY was discovered by an observatory in South Africa. This belongs to the Atlas network. This stands for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. Potential threats from space should be detected as quickly as possible by this system, so that Hollywood films such as “Deep Impact” or “Armageddon”, in which the lives of millions are at stake, remain fiction.
Ten years ago, a meteorite impact injured 1,500 people
Sea Science Alert the diameter of the asteroid is about 16 meters. But even with this size, it can be dangerous: In 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor entered the atmosphere and injured around 1,500 people in a sparsely populated region in Siberia with its shock wave and shattering window glass. At over 12,000 tons, it was the largest known meteorite in over 100 years.
The youngest meteroite asteroid 2023 EY belongs to the Apollo asteroids, named after the asteroid 1862 Apollo, which the German Karl Reinmuth discovered in the 1930s. (cgsc)
Speaking of space: a newly discovered comet is coming close to earth: the celestial body will probably shine so brightly in October 2024 that it can be seen with the naked eye.