Scientists at NASA have adjusted their forecast of an Empire State Building-sized asteroid it predicts could potentially smash into the planet.
The chances of the large rock hitting the Earth have increased.
In a press conference Wednesday, NASA said there was a 1-in-1,750 chance the asteroid, Bennu, could smash into the Earth between now and 2300. It’s a higher chance than previously predicted at 1 in 2,700 chances.
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“It’s not a significant change,” lead research author Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, according to the New York Times. “I’m not any more concerned about Bennu than I was before. The impact probability remains really small.”
Researchers said they could say for sure the asteroid is unlikely to hit within the current century. But by 2135, Bennu will pass Earth closer than ever before, coming much closer than the moon.
Scientists worry the Earth’s gravitational pull could slingshot the asteroid back into space, causing a boomerang-like effect that could cause a collision a half-century later. September 24, 2182, is the most concerning date, NASA revealed.
While Bennu is enormous, about a third of a mile wide, it’s not enough to destroy the entire planet. But at nearly the size of the Empire State Building, it could cause tremendous damage and destruction.
“You can usually, by rule of thumb, say the crater size is going to be 10 to 20 times the size of the object,” NASA defense researcher Lindley Johnson said, saying an impact anywhere on the U.S. East Coast would devastate the entire seaboard.
Findings from NASA’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft, which spent two years trailing the asteroid allowing scientists to plot its orbit, supported the new calculations. OSIRIS left Bennu about three months ago to return to Earth with samples it collected from the rock.
Their work is far from done. NASA admits it has yet to discover a significant number of asteroids that could pose problems for the planet. Scientists are also working on sending spacecraft to collide with asteroids and throw them off course to avoid hitting the Earth.
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