Phew, that was close! ‘City killer’ asteroid passes between earth and moon
Here's the big, dumb rock that's heading back into deep space after a close but safe encounter with earth. Image: NASA
An asteroid big enough to destroy an entire city has zoomed past the earth in a once-in-a-decade close encounter.
The giant rock, named 2023 DZ2 and between 40 and 100 metres in diameter, slipped safely between the moon and earth at 6.50am on Sunday AEDT.
Astronomers, who only discovered the deep-space nomad in late February, were never worried about a catastrophic collision, correctly calculating it would miss the planet by about 168,000 kilometres.
That may seem quite a distance until you consider that the moon is 384,400 kilometres from earth.
With a clear sky and at its closest approach, the asteroid could be observed with even small telescopes and binoculars.
There was no chance “of this ‘city killer’ striking earth”, said the European Space Agency’s planetary defence chief Richard Moissl, who welcomed the celestial visitor as “a great opportunity for observations”.
The space agency put the chances of 2023 DZ2 hitting earth within the next century at zero.
