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After a brief flirtation with doom , the newly disclose asteroid that was give a1 - in-600 chanceof slamming into Earth on Valentine ’s Day 2046 is now highly improbable to strike our planet , NASAannounced .
The asteroid , which was first observe on Feb. 27 and bring up " 2023 DW , " measures about 165 feet ( 50 meters ) in diam , or roughly the duration of an Olympic - size swim pond .
A graphical representation of the asteroid 2023 DW.
ab initio given a slim but possible chance of a direct impact byNASA ’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office , the scourge posed by the asteroid generated a flurry of news insurance coverage give notice readers to reconsider any amatory program made for 2046 . Now , NASA has revised this estimate , order the asteroid ’s chances of hitting Earth at around 1 - in-770 , mean it has a 99.87 % chance of miss us . TheEuropean Space Agency ’s ( ESA ) Near - Earth Object Coordination Centrehas also lowered its risk estimate — downgrading the impingement odds from a 1 - in-625 opportunity to around 1 - in-1,584 .
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" It will go down now with every observance until it reaches zero in a couple of days at the latest,“Richard Moissl , the head of theESA ’s planetal defence government agency , told Agence France - Presseon Tuesday ( Mar. 14 ) . " No one need to be disquieted about this guy . "
NASA tracks the locations and orbits of just about 28,000 asteroids , following them with the Asteroid sublunary - impact Last Alert System ( ATLAS ) , an array of four scope that can do a CAT scan of the entire Nox sky every 24 hour . The distance federal agency swag any distance object that comes within 120 million miles ( 193 million klick ) of Earth as a " near - Earth object " and classifies any large object within 4.65 million sea mile ( 7.5 million klick ) of our planet as " potentially hazardous . "
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NASA has estimated the trajectories of all these near - Earth object beyond the end of the one C . Earth confront no experience danger from an revelatory asteroid hit for at least the next 100 years , according to NASA .
If 2023 DW did smash into Earth , it would not be a cataclysmic event like the 7.5 - mile - full ( 12 km)dinosaur - killing asteroidthat struck Earth 66 million yr ago . But this does n’t mean smaller asteroids of its size of it are n’t dangerous . In March 2021 , for example , a bowling formal - size meteorexploded over Vermontwith the force play of 440 pound ( 200 kilograms ) of TNT . Even more dramatically , a 2013 blowup of a 59 - foot - wide ( 18 m ) meteor above Chelyabinsk , Russia , bring forth a blast rough equal to around 400 to 500 kilotons of TNT , or 26 to 33 time the DOE issue by theHiroshima bomb calorimeter , and offend around 1,500 multitude .
blank space agencies around the man are already working on possible way to deflect a dangerous asteroid if one were ever headed our way of life . On Sept. 26 , the Double Asteroid Redirection Test ( DART ) spacecraft redirect the non - risky asteroid Dimorphos byramming it off form , alter the asteroid ’s orbit by 32 minute in the first test of Earth ’s planetary defense system . NASA has sincehailed the delegation as a successbeyond all expectations .
China has also suggestedit is in the early planning stages of an asteroid - redirect mission . By slamming 23 Long March 5 roquette into the asteroid Bennu , which will swing within 4.6 million miles ( 7.4 million kilometer ) of Earth ’s orbit between the years 2175 and 2199 , the nation hopes to amuse the space tilt from a potentially catastrophic impact with our planet .
