Asteroid 2023 DZ2, the size of the Parthenon, will pass safely between Earth and the Moon once every ten years, providing an opportunity for planetary defense training. An asteroid could devastate a city if it hits Earth.
A large asteroid will pass safely between Earth and the moon on Saturday, a once-in-a-decade event that the European Space Agency says will be used as a training exercise for planetary defense.
The asteroid, named 2023 DZ2, is estimated to be 40 to 70 meters (130 to 230 feet) wide, roughly the size of the Parthenon, and large enough to obliterate a large city if it were to hit our planet. It will approach a third of the distance from Earth to the moon at 19:49 GMT on Saturday, said Richard Moissl, head of ESA’s Planetary Defense Office.
Asteroid Speed :
Small asteroids fly by every day, but one this big that comes this close to Earth only happens once every 10 years, he added. The asteroid will pass 175,000 kilometers (109,000 miles) from Earth at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,400 miles per hour). The moon is roughly 385,000 kilometers away.
The observatory in La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, first spotted the asteroid on February 27. The UN-sanctioned International Asteroid Warning Network decided to take a closer look and conduct a “rapid characterization” of 2023 DZ2.
This means that astronomers from around the world will be analyzing the asteroid with a range of instruments such as spectrometers and radars.
Composition of the Asteroid:
Moissl said “The goal is to see how much we can learn about such an asteroid in just a week, It will also serve as training for how the network would “respond to a threat” that might come our way in the future, preliminary data indicate that 2023 DZ2 is a “scientifically interesting object,” suggesting that it could be a rather unusual type of asteroid”.
The asteroid will swing by Earth again in 2026, but poses no threat of impact for at least 100 years – that’s how far its trajectory has been calculated. Earlier this month, a similarly sized asteroid, 2023 DW, was briefly given a one-in-432 chance of hitting Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046.
But further calculations ruled out any possibility of an impact, which is a common occurrence with newly discovered asteroids. Moissl said 2023 DW is now expected to miss Earth by about 4.3 million kilometers. Even if it were decided that such an asteroid was headed our way, Earth is no longer defenseless.
Last year, NASA’s DART probe deliberately crashed into an asteroid the size of the Dimorphos pyramid, knocking it significantly off course in the first such test of our planetary defenses.
Written by: Vaishali Verma
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