Although an asteroid with the potential to cause significant damage if it hit a populated area is coming somewhat unusually close to our planet this weekend, it is on course to pass harmlessly between the orbits of Earth and the moon.
On Saturday evening, the asteroid 2023 DZ2 will fly by at a distance of 105,633 miles . The moon, by comparison, is around 238,855 miles away from Earth.
"What's unusual about this object is that this is rather rare, that an object of this size passes so close to Earth. That happens about once every 10 years," Richard Moissl, ESA head of the Planetary Defence Office, told CNN Friday. Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that bring them to within 120 million miles of the sun, and this means they can "circulate through the Earth's orbital neighborhood," according to NASA.
During the Tunguska event of 1908, an asteroid "sent a shockwave down and flattened 2,000 square kilometers of forest" in Siberia, Moissl said. Also, some 50,000 years ago, an iron asteroid hit what is today Arizona, between Flagstaff and Winslow on the Colorado Plateau, creating a crater 0.75 miles across and about 600 feet deep.
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