Giant asteroid dubbed 'city killer' to closely shoot past Earth and Moon's orbit

A massive asteroid that could wipe out an entire city is making a close approach to earth this weekend. According to CNN, asteroid 2023 DZ2, dubbed "city killer", will pass through the orbits of earth and the moon, posing no danger to our home planet. The space object will fly past at a distance of 105,633 miles (170,000 kilometers) on the evening of Saturday.

The distance is pretty close, as the moon, by comparison, lies some 238,855 miles (384,400 kilometers) away from earth. While scientists are certain the earth will remain untouched, the "city killer" object is still worth noting. “What’s unusual about this object is that this is rather rare, that an object of this size passes so close to Earth. That happens about once every 10 years,” Richard Moissl, ESA head of the Planetary Defence Office, told the outlet on Friday.

“But this is a once in a decade opportunity to get some nice close-up measurements in a relatively large body that is relatively easy to measure to that effect,” he added. The asteroid measures between 40 and 100 meters (131 to 328 feet) in size, and will be monitored by experts with a radar. The 2023 DZ2 gained the "city killer" name because hypothetically, it can devastate a large part of land if it directly hits earth.

Where does the 'city killer' name come from? 

"If such an object would be going down directly over a city, this would be a problem: The whole city would likely be heavily damaged, and should be evacuated," he continued. “City killer is a nice slogan. It’s not a bad description. That’s why we didn’t completely throw it out of the window. Because it says in two words: This is dangerous on the level of being capable of destroying the city,” he elucidated.

But rest assured, 2023 DZ2 is in a heliocentric orbit, which means that it is located in an orbit around the sun and therefore, it will “continue to go round and round the sun,” according to Moissl. At present, over 1,450 near-Earth objects have secured a place on space agencies' "risk list" over their "slightest possibility that it might impact [Earth] over the next 100 years”.