Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

An asteroid is making a close approach to Earth, and scientists are pumped

By

A once-in-a-decade asteroid will be whizzing past the Earth this weekend. Object 2023 DZ2 is between 140 feet and 310 feet across and is making a close approach to our planet — but don’t worry, there’s no chance of an impact.

The object will pass within 100,000 miles of Earth, around half the distance between Earth and the moon, which is close enough for it to be classified as a Potentially Hazardous Object. But the good news is that an asteroid coming this close to us gives scientists a chance for a practice run at observing any future asteroids that could be dangerous.

Artist's concept of a near-Earth object.
An artist’s concept of a near-Earth object. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Scientists observing the event include a team from the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, who will be using this weekend as a “fire drill” to practice asteroid threat response.

Recommended Videos

“The idea is to use this opportunity as a rehearsal of sorts,” said a professor at the laboratory, Vishnu Reddy, in a statement. “We are using this asteroid as a stand-in for a scenario in which a space rock is detected that actually is headed toward the Earth. If that were to happen, we can apply lessons learned from exercises like this one – for example, what are the most important steps the international community would have to take to avert or minimize the risk of an impact and its possible aftermath?”

Newly-discovered asteroid 2023 DZ2 will sail safely past Earth today. Asteroids pass our planet safely all the time, but a close approach by one of this size (140–310 ft, or 43–95 m) happens only about once per decade. (There is no known threat for at least the next 100 years.)

— NASA (@NASA) March 25, 2023

Preparations had to be made quickly, as the asteroid was only spotted on February 27. At first, scientists thought it could impact the planet in 2026, but as they observed it further, they realized it would pass us by safely. Then they leapt at the opportunity to see the asteroid up-close, observing it using telescopes and looking for information on its composition. By studying the way light bounces off it, they can get an idea what it’s made of on the surface — and that will help them estimate its density, which will give them an idea of how it would react during an impact.

“None of these asteroids typically pose a threat,” said doctoral student David Cantillo. “Our goal is to learn more about their composition and specifically look at the smaller size range of near-Earth asteroids, because they’re much harder to detect. DZ2 happened to check all of those boxes with our ongoing work, while also having this extra timely component of a close approach this week.”

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Voyager 1 spacecraft is still alive and sending signals to Earth
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

NASA's two Voyager spacecraft, launched in the 1970s, have passed beyond the orbit of Pluto and into interstellar space, making them the most distant man-made objects to exist in the universe. However, as you'd expect from technology that is nearly 50 years old, the pair of probes have had their share of technical difficulties in their time. But now, NASA has announced that it is back in contact with Voyager 1, around five months after communications with the spacecraft were disrupted. The remarkable pair of explorers continue out into the depths of space to fight another day.

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Read more
Hubble discovers over 1,000 new asteroids thanks to photobombing
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158 looks like someone took a white marking pen to it. In reality it is a combination of time exposures of a foreground asteroid moving through Hubble’s field of view, photobombing the observation of the galaxy. Several exposures of the galaxy were taken, which is evidenced by the dashed pattern.

The Hubble Space Telescope is most famous for taking images of far-off galaxies, but it is also useful for studying objects right here in our own solar system. Recently, researchers have gotten creative and found a way to use Hubble data to detect previously unknown asteroids that are mostly located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The researchers discovered an incredible 1,031 new asteroids, many of them small and difficult to detect with several hundred of them less than a kilometer in size. To identify the asteroids, the researchers combed through a total of 37,000 Hubble images taken over a 19-year time period, identifying the tell-tale trail of asteroids zipping past Hubble's camera.

Read more
NASA needs a new approach for its challenging Mars Sample Return mission
An illustration of NASA's Sample Return Lander shows it tossing a rocket in the air like a toy from the surface of Mars.

NASA has shared an update on its beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission, admitting that its previous plan was too ambitious and announcing that it will now be looking for new ideas to make the mission happen. The idea is to send a mission to collect samples from the surface of Mars and return them to Earth for study. It's been a long-term goal of planetary science researchers, but one that is proving costly and difficult to put into practice.

The Perseverance rover has already collected and sealed a number of samples of Mars rock as it journeys around the Jezero Crater, and has left these samples in a sample cache ready to be collected.  However, getting them back to Earth in the previous plan required sending a vehicle to Mars, getting it to land on the surface, sending out another rover to collect the samples and bring them back, launching a rocket from the planet's surface (something which has never been done before), and then having this rocket rendezvous with another spacecraft to carry them back to Earth. That level of complexity was just too much to be feasible within a reasonable budget, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced this week.

Read more