An asteroid flew past Earth in an extremely close encounter Thursday night

An asteroid flew by Earth Thursday night in an extremely close encounter. The asteroid 2023 EY was discovered just a few days back on March 13. Its expected distance to the Earth was expected to be closerthan that of the moon. The asteroid was set to pass within 62 per cent of the average distance between Earth and the moon. In astronomical terms, the encounter was extremely close. However, the asteroid's trajectory was such that it did not pose any risk of hitting our planet.

Named Asteroid 2023 EY, it is about 52 feet across in size. It will pass within 239,800 kilometres of the Earth's surface, earlier reports stated.

It was the latest asteroid to be discovered by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) operated by the University of Hawaii. ATLAS to date has discovered over 700 near-Earth asteroids. The unique thing about ATLAS is that it can scan the entire sky every 24 hours This lets astronomers easily and quickly learn about other near-Earth objects and asteroids in a short time.

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"We have not yet found any significant asteroid impact threat to Earth, but we continue to search for that sizable population we know is still to be found. Our goal is to find any possible impact years to decades in advance so it can be deflected with a capability using technology we already have, like DART," Lindley Johnson, planetary defence officer at NASA, said in a statement.

According to NASA, the four telescopes of the system can survey an area of the sky 100 times larger than the full moon. Hawaii hosts two of the system's telescopes, with the other two in South Africa and Chile.

(With inputs from agencies)

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