An asteroid about 1.5 kilometers in size has been detected for the first time in the vicinity of Earth, scientists announced on Monday.
The asteroid, called 2022 AP7, “is in the path of Earth, which makes it a potentially dangerous asteroid,” said Carnegie Institution for Science astronomer Scott Sheppard.
The threat is not immediate, since it is “very far” from Earth, even crossing the planet’s orbit, he stressed.
But, like any asteroid, the trajectory will slowly change due to the gravitational forces exerted on it, that is, the planets, which makes any long-term prediction very difficult, said the scientist.
This is the “largest potentially hazardous object discovered in the past eight years,” according to a press release from the US NOIRLab, which operates several observatories.
This near-Earth asteroid takes five years to orbit the Sun and is now several million kilometers from Earth at closest point.
So the risk is hypothetical, but in the event of a collision, an asteroid of this size would have “a devastating impact on life as we know it,” explained Scott Sheppard.
Dust released into the atmosphere would block sunlight, cooling the planet and triggering a mass extinction.
The discovery was made through the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile, the results of which were published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.
Nearly 30,000 asteroids of all sizes, including more than 850 that are a kilometer or larger, have been cataloged in the vicinity of Earth, and none will pose a threat to the planet for the next 100 years.
According to Scott Sheppard, there are “between 20 and 50” large near-Earth objects (NEOs) yet to be detected.
“Most of them are in orbits that make detection difficult,” he added.
To prepare for a more serious discovery, the US space agency NASA carried out a test mission at the end of September: a spacecraft was launched against a non-hazardous asteroid, showing that it was possible to alter the trajectory.
Source: TSF
