NASA has quite recently refreshed its predictions about the chance of the Bennu asteroid rock hammering into Earth, in any event, venturing to such an extreme as to pinpoint the specific date an effect is generally plausible: September 24, 2182.
Spoiler alert: we’re presumably fine.
The background: Our close planetary system contains in excess of 1,000,000 space rocks, and most are minuscule and unlikely far-fetched to come anyplace close to Earth.
On the off chance that a huge asteroid were to pummel into Earth’s surface, however, the outcome could be crushing, so NASA set up the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) in 2016 to identify and screen any conceivably perilous space rocks and make an arrangement to forestall impacts, if conceivable.
The present moment, the PDCO is keeping out for two especially compromising space rocks, one of them being Bennu.
The Bennu space rock: NASA found the Bennu space rock in 1999. It’s as of now very nearly 200 million miles from us, however it’s relied upon to get inside 125,000 miles in 2135 — that is about a large portion of the distance among Earth and the moon.
“An article Bennu’s size … would practically pulverize things all over the coast.” LINDLEY JOHNSON
Bennu is around 33% of a mile (a large portion of a kilometer) wide, and if it somehow managed to affect Earth, it could cause significant annihilation.
“[A] half-kilometer-sized object is going to create a crater that’s at least five kilometers in diameter, and it can be as much as 10 kilometers in diameter,”PDCO Director Lindley Johnson told the New York Times.
“But the area of devastation is going to be much, much broader than that, as much as 100 times the size of the crater,” he continued. “So an object Bennu’s size impacting on the Eastern Seaboard states would pretty much devastate things up and down the coast.”
The OSIRIS-REx mission: To discover however much about the Bennu space rock as could reasonably be expected, NASA dispatched the OSIRIS-REx rocket in 2016.
The art went through two years considering Bennu very close, recording information from its circle and in any event, arrival on the space rock to gather rock tests — a first for NASA.
Those examples will not be in NASA’s grasp until 2023 (OSIRIS-REx is as yet making the excursion home), yet NASA has effectively utilized what it’s gained from the test to refresh its expectations about the Bennu space rock.
“The OSIRIS-REx data give us so much more precise information, we can test the limits of our models and calculate the future trajectory of Bennu to a very high degree of certainty through 2135,”study lead Davide Farnocchia said in a public statement.
“We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before,” he added.
What’s going on: According to NASA, the shot at the Bennu space rock hitting Earth among now and 2300 is around 1 out of 1,750. That is a slight change from its past expectation (a 1 of every 2,700 possibility of effect among now and 2200).
“I’m no more worried about Bennu than I was previously.”
DAVIDE FARNOCCHIA
Still up in the air the particular date when an impact with Bennu is probably — September 24, 2182 — however and still, after all that, the chances are only 1 of every 2,700.
The primary concern, as per Farnocchia?
“It’s not a significant change,” he told the NYT. “I’m not any more concerned about Bennu than I was before. The impact probability remains really small.”