Maybe one day we’ll send a group of oil rig workers off to space on an ill-advised mission to detonate an asteroid from the inside, but it’s not going to happen during the current century.
Asteroid 99942, named “Apophis,” was first discovered in 2004 and has been flagged before as a possible impact risk. Now, NASA is saying that the “slight” worry of a possible collision with Earth in 2068 can be safely put to rest, with radar observations having effectively ruled out any chance of that happening.
“A 2068 impact is not in the realm of possibility anymore, and our calculations don’t show any impact risk for at least the next 100 years,” said Davide Farnocchia, whose focus at NASA is near-Earth object studies. Read more…
More about Nasa, Asteroid, Science, and Space
