Could an asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool hit Earth soon? NASA responds

A newly discovered asteroid had a one in 600 chance of hitting Earth in February 2046, according to preliminary estimates. New analyses, however, have dramatically reduced the risk, making it highly unlikely that the space rock will hit our planet, according to NASA.

First detected on February 27 this year, the asteroid, called 2023 DW, measures about 50 meters in diameter, which is the length of an Olympic swimming pool.

When a small – but possible – chance of impact was announced by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the threat spawned a flurry of news advising people to reconsider any romantic plans made 23 years from now – a “joke” with the fact that Valentine’s Day, in most countries of the world, is celebrated on February 14 (Valentine’s Day).

Now, the agency has revised that estimate, putting the collision risk at a rate of one in 770, meaning the rock has a 99.87 percent chance of missing our planet.

According to the website space.com, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center has also lowered its risk estimate, reducing the odds of impact from one in 625 to about one in 1,584. “It will now drop with every observation until it reaches zero in a few days,” Richard Moissl, head of ESA’s planetary defense office, told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday (14).

No one need worry about this boy

Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency’s Planetary Defense Office

NASA tracks the locations and orbits of about 28,000 asteroids using the Asteroid Earth Impact Final Warning System (ATLAS), an array of four telescopes capable of scanning the entire night sky every 24 hours.

According to the agency’s standards, any space object that is within 193 million kilometers of our planet is considered a “near-Earth object” (NEO). Bodies over 140 meters in diameter that are within 7.5 million km of here are classified as “potentially dangerous”.

NASA has estimated the trajectories of all these near-Earth objects beyond the end of this century, finding that Earth faces no known danger from a doomsday asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years.

A collision between this asteroid and Earth would not be a catastrophic event like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, caused by a space rock about 15 km wide.

That doesn’t mean, however, that smaller asteroids aren’t dangerous. In 2013, an 18 m wide rock – less than half the size of 2023 DW – fell on the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, causing an explosion equal to approximately 400-500 kilotons of TNT, which is something between 26 and 33 times the energy released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. About 1,500 people were injured on that occasion.

Space agencies around the world are working on possible ways to deflect dangerous asteroids that are heading towards us.

On September 26 last year, for example, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) probe hit the non-hazardous asteroid Dimorphos, altering its orbit by 32 minutes during this mission which represented the first test of Earth’s planetary defense.

China would also be in the early stages of planning an asteroid redirection mission. By launching 23 Long March 5 rockets at asteroid Bennu, which is expected to pass within 7.4 million km of Earth’s orbit between the years 2175 and 2199, the country hopes to divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with the planet. .

Could an asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool hit Earth soon? NASA’s responses appeared first on Olhar Digital.

Source: Olhar Digital