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The Conversation
The Conversation
Steven Tingay, John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy), Curtin University

Asteroid 2023 BU just passed a few thousand kilometres from Earth. Here's why that's exciting

Asteroid 20223 BU's path in red, with green showing the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. NASA/JPL-Caltech

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our Solar System, which means new asteroids are discovered quite frequently. It also means close encounters between asteroids and Earth are fairly common.

Some of these close encounters end up with the asteroid impacting Earth, occasionally with severe consequences.

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