A newly discovered asteroid may collide with Earth on Valentine’s Day about 20 years from now, NASA officials tweeted out Tuesday. According to the space agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the asteroid has a 1-in-600 chance of making impact on the planet in 2046.
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The asteroid in question, 2023 DW(Opens in a new tab), is roughly the length of an Olympic swimming pool with an estimated measurement of about 165 feet (50 meters) in diameter. Despite the higher-than-normal risk level, NASA says in its tweet that 2023 DW has a “very small chance of impacting Earth.” Additionally, the agency also stated that it would take some time to “reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict” orbits for new objects like 2023 DW.
Even still, an impact from the near-Earth asteroid wouldn’t be cataclysmic. NASA ranks the asteroid a 1 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale(Opens in a new tab), which measures the risk of space objects colliding with Earth from 0-10. According to NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, with a score of 1, an actual collision with 2023 DW is “extremely unlikely and no cause for public concern.”
“This object is not particularly concerning,” JPL navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia told CNN(Opens in a new tab).
For scale, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was 7.5 miles wide (12 kilometers). However, an impact from 2023 DW near a populated city could spell trouble. In 2013, a meteor half the size of 2023 DW struck Chelyabinsk, Russia, generating a shock wave that damaged thousands of buildings and injured roughly 1,500 people.
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If you’re still concerned, the success of NASA’s DART mission should calm your nerves. Last October, the agency’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission successfully altered the trajectory of a small asteroid after slamming a spacecraft directly into it. Thus, proving NASA’s ability to thwart attempts from potentially dangerous space objects from striking the planet.
“Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in,” NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office said in a tweet(Opens in a new tab).
