The European Space Agency, (ESA), reported that a large asteroid will pass on Saturday between Earth and the Moon.
The ESA indicated in a statement that this event occurs only once every ten years, assuring that it does not pose any danger and will serve as training for planetary defense techniques.
The diameter of the asteroid, which the space agency called “2023 DZ2”, is estimated to be between 40 and 70 meters, a size sufficient to annihilate a large city if it collided with the planet Earth.
According to Agence France-Presse, the head of the Planetary Defense Office at ESA Richard Moissl said that the asteroid will pass between the Earth and the Moon at exactly 19:49 GMT on Saturday, and it will be at a distance of less than a third of the space that separates the Earth from the Moon, meaning it will be very close to the surface.
Moissl explained that the asteroid will pass at a distance of about 175,000 km from Earth at a speed of 28,000 km per hour.
He assured that there is no need to worry, pointing out that there are small asteroids that pass near the planet Earth every day, but the passage of such a large body so close to Earth occurs only once every ten years.
Moissl noted that this asteroid will serve as an exercise in how “the network will deal with such threats in the future.”
Calculations show that the asteroid will pass again near Earth during the year 2026, but at a greater distance, and therefore it will not pose any danger of collision with it during the next hundred years at least.
