The odds of Bennu striking Earth have risen from one in. Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer for NASA, predicted that if the Earth was struck by the asteroid, the amount of area destroyed would equal the asteroid’s size 100 fold, according to the AP. The chances of one of the most hazardous asteroids in the solar system hitting Earth are higher than previously thought, NASA has said. However, they said that based on the data from Osiris-Rex spacecraft, the chances of gravity interfering with its trajectory are slimmer now. (It’s difficult to say with utter certainty because the orbit of the asteroid is not fully known. As a result, scientists behind new research now say theyre confident that the asteroids total impact probability through 2300 is just 1 in 1,750, reports. Scientists said that the Earth’s gravity could affect Bennu’s orbit and create a collision with the planet in the next two centuries. The odds are roughly 1 in 240, or about 0.4 percent. Scientists say that Bennu will get within close proximity of the planet by 2135. “We shouldn’t be worried about it too much,” Farnocchia said, who was the lead author of the findings, which were published in the Icarus journal. The spacecraft is slated to arrive back to Earth in 2023. Before Osiris-Rex arrived on the scene, scientists put the odds of Bennu hitting Earth through the year 2200 at 1-in-2,700. Scientists previously said that the odds that Bennu would strike the Earth into 2200 was 1 in 2,700, but those figures were adjusted to 1 in 1,750 into the year 2300, The Associated Press reported.įarnocchia works with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and told reporters that the Osiris-Rex spacecraft, which landed on Bennu in 2018 to collect samples, has given them a better idea of the asteroid’s future orbital path, according to the wire service. However, Davide Farnocchia stressed that Earthlings shouldn’t be too worried. From the survey, published last month in the Astronomical Journal, the researchers set only 1-in-5,000 odds of a city-size asteroid smacking into Earth and killing hundreds of millions of people sometime in the next century ' down, they said, from the roughly 1-in-1,500 odds set by earlier estimates. A NASA scientist said Wednesday that the likelihood of the Bennu asteroid hitting Earth within the next century or two has increased.
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