How To Catch The House-Sized Asteroid That’s Zipping Past Earth Tonight, 6/25

An asteroid roughly the size of a house will be making a nearby flyby of Earth tonight. Asteroid 2023 MU2 will be able to be viewed zipping by our home planet via a live feed later today.

2023 MU2 was actually only discovered on June 21, 2023, and announced the next day. The near-Earth asteroid is estimated to be around 3.8 - 8.6 meters (13 - 29 feet) in diameter. The asteroid will have a very close approach in terms of astronomical terms, coming within 215,000 km (134,000 miles) from Earth, or about 60% of the average lunar distance. The close flyby will be able to be viewed via a live feed provided by The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 below.
It is important to point out that while the distance from Earth is very close in astronomical terms, 2023 MU2 will still be a safe distance from our home planet. The discovery of the asteroid, discovered on June 16, was confirmed on June 22 by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center.

Last week was actually very busy with near-Earth objects, with five space rocks zipping by Earth between June 18-21. The largest of those was 55 meters (180 feet) in diameter and passed at a distance of nearly 4.8 million kilometers (3 million miles).

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory states that any object larger than approximately 150 meters in diameter that approaches within 7.5 million kilometers (4.6 million miles) is a potentially hazardous object. So, while 2023 MU2 will be close enough, it is not large enough to fall into this category.

However, the incident in Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 demonstrated just how much damage a near-Earth asteroid exploding in Earth's atmosphere can produce. That event produced a total energy of about 0.5Mt, or about the same total energy of a modern ICBM thermonuclear warhead. The resulting blast wave injured 1,600 people and damaged a multitude of structures. It is estimated that if an impact of the same nature had occurred over a major city, it could have killed and injured millions of people. That asteroid was estimated to be about 17 to 20 meters in size (about 18.6 to 21.9 yards), according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The fact that asteroid 2023 MU2 was only discovered a few days ago reinforces the need for things such as NASA's DART mission, which had a spacecraft fly into an asteroid in deep space in order to change its direction of travel.

2023 MU2 is said to be making its closest approach to Earth at 7:19pm ET and can be viewed via livestream above, or on The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 website.