Asteroid 2023 DZ2 will pass between the Earth and the Moon on March 27. What is the impact risk

The asteroid 2023 DZ2 it will pass close to the Earth on March 27, 2023, at a shorter distance – less than half the average distance – than that which separates our planet from the Moon. A very close greeting for this celestial body.

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The trajectory was calculated after the sighting of 2023 DZ2, detected on February 27, 2023 by the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. It is the result of the surveys of the Isaac Newton telescopes and the astronomers of the Euronear Project: Kiran Jhass, Ovidiu Vaduvescu and Freya Barwell.

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Asteroid 2023 DZ2 has a diameter of 58 meters, equal to that of an imposing building. The damage from a possible impact would be very substantial. For comparison, the size of this celestial body is three times larger than the asteroid that exploded above Chelyabinsk, an event that took place in 2013: 1,500 people were injured and many buildings were damaged over a large area.

But what are the risks of this passage close to the Earth? According to NASA calculations, 2023 DZ2 will transit at about 170,000 km, which is less than the distance that separates our planet from its satellite.

The ESA surveys, in particular those of the Near Earth Coordination, predict that the asteroid 2023 DZ2 will touch the closest point to the Earth at 12:15 Italian timemoving to over 32,000 km/h

In light of these data, the near-Earth passage of asteroid 2023 DZ2 on March 27, 2023 therefore it does not represent a danger for the moment. The chances of impact are practically nil.

Instead, there is a slightly higher risk for the next passage of asteroid 2023 DZ2 near our planet, scheduled for March 27, 2026. In reality, these data have also been updated recently in an even more reassuring way, compared to what was initially revealed

The NASA database – called Sentry: Earth Impact Monitoring of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory – in fact reports for March 27, 2026 a impact risk between Earth and asteroid 2023 DZ2 equal to 0.0000026%. This is a 1 in 38,000,000 chance of collision, or there is a 99.9999974% chance that the asteroid will miss Earth. Previously there was talk of a risk equal to 1 in 621: in short, very different numbers that would have aroused some more concern.

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