It came from the same direction as the most destructive meteoroid to impact Earth in a century, but it may be three times larger.
It’s estimated that the Chelyabinsk meteoroid was around 20 meters across when it impacted our atmosphere, whereas 2023 NT1 appears to be three times as wide, making it roughly the size of a hotel like the George Washington in New York City or the Idaho State Capitol.
To get a sense of what a direct hit from an object this size might do, we have to reach back into history a bit, to the Pleistocene epoch 50,000 years ago, when a slightly smaller asteroid formed the famedin Arizona. There’s no way to know what kind of damage the impact did back then, but it’s thought the meteorite itself was instantly vaporized and it left behind some rare minerals that can only be created by shocks of extreme pressures like lightning, impact or a nuclear explosion.
The vast majority of these asteroids seem to keep their distance on their own orbits around the sun most of the time. The close approach made by 2023 NT1 brought it within about 60,000 miles of Earth, which is obviously plenty of breathing room in reality but on the scale of space it’s just a hair away and it’s even closer to the region where some of our large satellites orbit.
New asteroids passing this close by Earth are discovered every week, however 2023 NT1 is among the largest seen in the past year.Follow me on
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