According to international astronomers, 10,000 km is the approximate distance that asteroid 2023 BU will fly from Earth this Thursday (26) at 19:17 (Brazil time).

The satellites that monitor the planet’s rotation are located about 36,000 km from the Earth’s surface – Photo: Reproduction Internet

The stone, first discovered by engineer and astronomer Gennady Borisov, has an estimated diameter of 3.7 to 8.2 meters and belongs to the so-called Apollo group of asteroids, which includes celestial bodies potentially hazardous to Earth due to the risk of a catastrophic collision. .

BU 2023 will pass so close to the Earth that the satellites that follow the planet’s rotation (geostationary) are about 36,000 km from the Earth’s surface. Therefore, the space rock would only be 10% of the distance used by these spaceships.

10,000 km is the approximate distance at which asteroid 2023 BU will fly by Earth. Photo: JPL/NASA/Reproduction

Just this year, the asteroid became the third to pass close to Earth, at a distance less than the distance between the Moon and our planet, and the fourth ever recorded.

The asteroid is located at the height of the constellation Ursa Major, at a distance of less than 900,000 km from our planet and is moving at a speed of about 33,480 km/h.

The good news is that after some high-precision orbit calculations done by NASA’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), it has been confirmed that BU 2023 will not affect the planet at all.

This is because even with the maximum size, its total mass will be about 866 tons. If the Earth is hit, most of it will be absorbed by the atmosphere, thus releasing energy equivalent to nine thousand tons of TNT.

The transit of asteroid 2023 BU will be streamed online by the Virtual Telescope Project, a service provided by the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory based in Rome, Italy, starting at 4:15 pm.