Asteroid will likely hit Earth – but not for at least 100 years

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An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building is scheduled to have a close encounter with Earth.

Before you stock up your bunkers, let us reassure you that it’s not supposed to happen for at least 100 years so for now, we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

NASA scientists called the asteroid Bennu in a news conference on Wednesday, detailing the massive pile of rubble is about half a kilometre wide at its equator – a bit wider than the NYC landmark, reported the New York Times.

In a new study published in the scientific journal Icarus, the scientists reportedly analyzed its chances of posing an immediate threat to the planet and found a 1-in-1,750 chance of it impacting Earth over the next three centuries.

That is a slighter higher calculation than an earlier estimation, which had the probability of Bennu hitting the planet at 1-in-2,700 over a shorter period, between now and 2200.

“It’s not a significant change,” said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and lead author of the study.

“I’m not any more concerned about Bennu than I was before. The impact probability remains really small.”

For the next century or so, Bennu will continue to orbit the sun in relative remoteness. But around 2135, it will reportedly come pretty close to Earth – within 200,000 kilometres or so, said the report.

The riskiest encounter, however could happen on Sept. 24, 2182, but scientists say the impact won’t be too bad.

There’s a 0.037% chance it could have devastating results and not nearly enough to result in extinction.

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has spent two years studying Bennu up close, and scientists were able to pin down the asteroid’s orbit.

That led to the improved estimate of Bennu’s position by 2135.

“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,” said Farnocchia. “We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before.”

Bennu was first discovered in 1999 and because its orbit crosses Earth’s, planetary scientists deemed the crater as a potential danger to our planet.

It also appears to have carbon molecules that may have provided the building blocks of life on Earth. The latest mission near Bennu is reportedly headed back home to drop off samples of rock and dirt for further study.