An asteroid the size of a small delivery truck will pass Earth in one of the closest encounters ever recorded this morning.

The asteroid, dubbed 2023 BU, will fly above South America at a distance of 3600 kilometres, which astrophysicist Brad Tucker says is a “pretty close shave”.

He told Laurel, Gary & Mark it was only discovered eight days ago by an astronomer.

“It was such a surprise,” he said. That is actually really, really close. It’s 10 times closer than our satellites in what we call ‘geosynchronous orbit’.

“Because it’s so small, we could only see it when it was really close to Earth, so we had no idea this one was going around.”

Press PLAY below to hear how much damage it could do if it hit Earth

Image: Nasa JPL/Caltech