Asteroid 2023 BU will come closest to Earth on Friday morning with The Virtual Telescope Project live-streaming the fly-by
A newly discovered asteroid – estimated to be the size of a London bus – will have an extremely close encounter with Earth at the end of this week.
The space rock named Asteroid 2023 BU was only identified by an astronomer in Crimea at the weekend.
It is expected to skim just 2,100 miles above the planet's surface at its nearest point, says NASA, between Thursday night and Friday morning.
While many asteroids pass beyond the distance of the Moon – about 240,000 miles away – this encounter is estimated to be the fourth-closest journey 2023 BU will ever make in 35,000 past and future encounters.
The asteroid is believed to measure around 12ft by 28ft – roughly the same size as an original Routemaster bus – and will hurtle past at speeds of 33,000mph.
It is expected to come its closest on Friday morning at about 12.30am GMT when it will be nearer to us than the satellites around and above Earth.
Watch the asteroid encounter live
While Asteroid 2023 BU will whiz past at its closest for hundreds of years the high-speed rock is not going to be visible to the naked eye.
Instead telescopes are already gearing up to capture the event including Italy-based The Virtual Telescope Project which is planning to show the whole event live online.
For those wishing to watch from the comfort of their own home, the live feed will start at just after 7pm on Thursday evening and further details are available here.
Experts calculating its orbit and trajectory say there is no chance the asteroid will hit Earth on this approach.
According to NASA, space rocks that are smaller than 25m across also most likely burn up as they enter the Earth's atmosphere anyway meaning that they cause minimal damage on the ground.
The start of 2023 has proved to be a busy time for skygazers.
Earlier this month hundreds of people spotted a meteor shooting through the skies above England – an event also captured on CCTV cameras and Ring door bells – which prompted experts at the Met Office to appeal for people's footage.
Separately a bright green comet, not seen in our solar system since the last ice age, is also now hurtling towards Earth for the first time in 50,000 years.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), says NASA, was discovered by astronomers using a wide-field survey camera in early March 2022 at an observatory in California.
Since then, say experts, the comet has brightened substantially and is now passing through the inner solar system with a chance it may be visible to the naked eye in early February.
