A 100-meter-long asteroid, known as 2023 DZ2, will pass within a distance less than the one separating the Earth from the Moon this Saturday. NASA’s Asteroid Watch System has explained that this event only occurs once every decade. The asteroid, which will reach a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour, does not pose a threat to Earth, and scientists will use the information gathered to address a possible threat in the future. A small threat of a collision with Earth in 2026 was initially detected, but the possibility was later ruled out. ESA has confirmed that there is no chance of the asteroid hitting our planet in the next 100 years.
On February 27, asteroid 2023 DZ2 was detected by the Isaac Newton Telescope, located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands. Currently, according to NASA’s Eyes on Asteroids platform, there are six other near-Earth asteroids, none of which pose a danger to our planet.
One of these near-Earth asteroids is Apophis, which is considered a potentially dangerous object due to its size of 300 meters. It will pass harmlessly close to Earth in 2029, about 37,000 kilometers away. Currently, there are 2,293 potentially hazardous objects that are units with a size of at least 140 meters long and will pass at least about 7,480,000 kilometers from Earth. Although most of them are not in current Earth-crossing orbits, their orbits may evolve over hundreds or thousands of years so that they can cross the Earth, according to NASA.