A New NASA report shares a harrowing prediction that Earth may be in for an interstellar collision with an asteroid in the year 2182. This massive asteroid could potentially decimate an area the size of a small country should the collision course not be averted and if NASA’s predictions hold true.
Adding to the terrifying news, NASA has quietly learned about the object named Bennu since 1999, when it first started attempts to divert the asteroid from its course. Bennu comes close to Earth (close in terms of the massive distances that objects generally have between each other in space) once every six years, according to the Space Agency.
According to MSN, the asteroid is roughly one-third of a mile wide. It stands about as tall as the gargantuan Empire State Building and is hurling through space at breakneck speeds. They claim that a collision with Earth would be equivalent to the exploding of 22 atomic bombs simultaneously at one small location.
Way off in the future, in 2135, Bennu will reach an inflection point in its flight. NASA points out that there is a small “keyhole” in the gravitational field that would redirect Bennu toward our home planet with deadly effects. While that chance is very real, scientists say that the odds are less than one percent that the asteroid reaches that keyhole.
According to Rich Burns, the project manager for OSIRIS-REx, who spoke about NASA’s ongoing attempts to understand and redirect the asteroid, “It feels very much like the last few miles of a marathon, with a confluence of emotions like pride and joy coexisting with a determined focus to complete the race well.”
That mission, titled OSIRIS-REx, was launched in 2016 to collect samples from the asteroid that is so near to Earth’s orbit. The spacecraft met up with Bennu and extracted roughly half a pound of sediment from the asteroid to bring back home for study. The new finding gave NASA ample information about the asteroid.
This coming Sunday, the spacecraft will be attempting to release its findings back to Earth so that our scientists can begin to dissect the sediment and learn any new information they can find about Bennu and similar spacial bodies.
The associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Nicola Fox, explained, “Pristine material from asteroid Bennu will help shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago and perhaps even on how life on Earth began.”
This new data could illuminate many of the questions that scientists have surrounding the creation of our own planet and how it supports life every day.
Scientists also hope that the findings can be used to glean more information about life elsewhere in the solar system. Could life be made in other parts of the cosmos, and can we find out how that happens? NASA hopes that the answers to those questions are in the sediment that we will soon receive from Bennu.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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