Asteroid 2023 FM which is roughly the size of 90 elephants is approaching Earth at high speeds of 15.8km/sec. It will come closest to the planet on April 6, the Times of India said, citing minorplanetcenter.net.
The asteroid has a height range of 85-270 metres. This was discovered on March 16 and the route, elliptical in nature, was discovered on April 2. However, it will not get much closer than 3,000,000 km to the Earth’s surface, the website said. This means that its chances to cause destruction remains negligible.
However, there is another asteroid, Asteroid 2023 DW, discovered in late February. This will come close to planet Earth on February 14, 2046, more than two decades from now.
NASA’s Asteroid Watch said: “We’ve been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future”.
Asteroid 2023 DW’s diameter is listed at nearly 50 metres, which is roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. The NASA wing which studies asteroids said that orbit analysts will continue their monitoring of asteroid DW and update predictions once more data is available.
The space agency projected that Asteroid 2023 DW has a 1 in 600 chance of impacting Earth. The probability remains low but it poses a threat to the planet since it impacting a metro area could lead to damage to lives and livelihood.
The asteroid takes about 271 days to orbit the Sun.
It occupies the top spot on the European Space Agency’s “risk list” for near-Earth objects and the space organisation says there is a one-in-625 chance of colliding with our planet on Valentine’s Day in 2046.
The Tunguska event in 1908 where an asteroid struck a remote part of Russia flattened at least 2,150 square kilometers of forest area.
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