The asteroid 2023 TW is notable because of its distance from Earth: it will come within 375,000 miles of Earth’s orbit, called a mean orbital intercept distance, but researchers assure the public that there’s no chance of it impacting Earth as the planet won’t be in that part of its orbit when the asteroid is. “The mean orbital intercept distance describes how close an object approaches Earth’s orbit,” explained the director of the Catalina Sky Survey Carson Fuls. “Earth might not be anywhere near the asteroid when it approaches a spot in its orbit.”
So this object won’t pose a danger to our planet, but it is still an interesting object to study because of its size. At 164 feet across, it is similar in size to meteors that have struck Earth in the past, but not big enough to be considered a potentially hazardous object.
“For an object to be considered a potentially hazardous asteroid, both the distance and size need to be taken into account,” Fuls says. “This asteroid meets the distance requirement, but not the size requirement.” When asteroids do come very close to the Earth, the smaller ones tend to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere, which is the reason that only larger asteroids are considered hazardous.
