Nasa now knows when asteroid Bennu is most likely to crash into Earth
Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Bennu will make a close approach to Earth in 2135, and scientists will use that passing to predict how Earth’s gravity will affect the asteroid’s path around the Sun – and a future potential impact. The scientists examined whether Bennu would pass through a “gravitational keyhole”, which are areas in space with greavitational energy that would pull it towards Earth. “The effect on Bennu is equivalent to the weight of three grapes constantly acting on the asteroid – tiny, yes, but significant when determining Bennu’s future impact chances over the decades and centuries to come,” said Steve Chesley, senior research scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab and co-investigator of the study. “We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before.” If Bennu did slam into Earth, it wouldn’t wipe out life, dinosaur-style, but rather create a crater roughly 10 to 20 times the size of the asteroid, said Lindley Johnson, Nasa’s planetary defense officer.
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