The World – January 29, 2023

Astronomers say an asteroid the size of a pickup truck has been spotted before

Just a few days after its passage through the Earth, on Thursday, although it posed no threat to humans, highlights a shortcoming in the ability to predict what could actually cause harm.

The US aviation and Space Administration (NASA) has been prioritizing for years the detection of asteroids much larger and more threatening to the existence of mankind than the small space rock U-2023, which moved 2,200 miles from the Earth's surface, a distance closer than some satellites.

Even if the asteroid headed towards Earth, the atmosphere would crush it and only small fragments would reach land from it.

But u-2023 is the smallest of a group of asteroids ranging in diameter from five meters to 50 meters, and also includes those of large sizes equivalent to an Olympic swimming pool.

It is difficult to detect objects of this size before they are much closer to the Earth, which complicates any efforts to prepare for what could affect a populated area.

NASA says that the probability that a space rock, called a meteorite, will hit the Earth when it enters the atmosphere, the size of which in this range is relatively low, and this is graded according to the size of the asteroid.

It is estimated that the probability of a five-meter diameter rock hitting the Earth is once a year and a 50-meter diameter Rock is once every thousand years.

But with the current potential, astronomers can find out when such rocks are heading towards the Earth only days in advance.

"We don't know where most of the asteroids that could cause local and regional destruction are located,"said Terek Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says that the meteorite with a diameter of almost 20 meters, which exploded in 2013 over Chile "abenskoprosya" is something that happens once every 100 years.

The fall of the meteorite caused a shock wave that broke tens of thousands of windows and caused damage amounting to 33 million dollars, and no one saw it before it entered the Earth's atmosphere.