An asteroid the size of a firetruck had a record-setting close encounter with Earth on Thursday.
The asteroid, identified by authorities as 2023 BU, is estimated to be between 11 1/2 and 28 feet in size and passed by 2,200 miles above the Earth’s surface over the southern tip of South America.
2023 BU was previously orbiting in a circular motion around the sun. That lasted 359 days. After its close encounter with Earth, its orbit will elongate and complete every orbit in 425 days.
“In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded,” a navigation engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Davide Farnocchia, said in a statement.
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2023 BU soared past the planet at 33,000 mph, and NASA scientists said there is little to no chance it will strike the Earth during its orbit. The flyby was captured in a livestream by the Virtual Telescope Project.
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Most asteroids pass Earth at over 240,000 miles away, further than the distance between the Earth and the moon, according to a report.
