NASA: A small asteroid will pass by Earth today Thursday (26/1) – Watch its path live

A small asteroid – 3.5 to 8.5 meters in diameter – is predicted to fly past Earth on January 26. This is one of the closest asteroid approaches ever recorded, at an estimated distance of only 3,600 kilometers from the surface of our planet, according to the American space agency (NASA).

Asteroid “2023 BU” will pass just above the southern tip of South America, much lower – to about one-tenth – than the orbit of geomodern satellites. However, it does not pose a risk, as even if it did fall to our planet, it would be expected to largely disintegrate upon friction with the Earth’s atmosphere.

The asteroid was discovered last Saturday by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov from Crimea, who also discovered the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Observations of “2023 BU” by dozens of other observatories around the world followed.

The final analysis of its orbit data was done by the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. American researchers predicted that the asteroid will pass unusually close to Earth. In fact, because it will come so close, the gravity of our planet will change its course, with the result that in the future it will erase an oval orbit around the Sun every 425 days, instead of 359 until now.

In fact, NASA has created a platform where anyone can watch live the position of the planets, as well as the orbit of comets and asteroids around the Sun.

Watch live HERE.

RES-EMP

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