It has a diameter of 500 meters and travels at a speed of 100,000 km/h towards Earth. The asteroid Bennu will pass very close to us in the year 2135, but the probability of its collision is still very low.
NASA reported this week that in just over 100 years, Bennu will be close to Earth, just half our planet’s distance from the moon. The US space agency added that the side effect, around 2300, would still be on the order of a minute and a “chance” in 1750.
Discovered in 1999, Bennu is one of two known asteroids in our solar system that pose the greatest danger to Earth, according to NASA.
two years of grades
The Osiris-Rex probe, from the US space agency, spent two years in orbit around Bennu, and left last May to bring back samples collected during a contact that lasted a few seconds with Earth.
The samples are scheduled to reach Earth in 2023. The mission made it possible to study the asteroid more closely and greatly improve predictions of its future trajectory.
Scientists concluded that by the year 2300, the chances of hitting Earth were only 0.057%. “In other words, that means there’s a 99.94 percent chance that Bennu isn’t on a collision course,” said David Farnocchia, scientist with NASA’s Near Earth Object Studies. “So you don’t need to worry too much.”
Live: Hear an important science update on # Osirisrix, mission to return the asteroid sample that was #ToBennuAndBack: https://t.co/z1RgZwQkWS pic.twitter.com/kiQGejO0ny
– NASA (@NASA) August 11, 2021
“Gravity Keyhole”
The fact is that in September 2135, Bennu will pass close to Earth. This will give you the possibility to cross the so-called “gravitational keyhole”: a region that, due to the gravitational effect of our planet, would slightly change the course of the asteroid, and thus put it on a trajectory. future collision.
Before the Osiris-Rex mission, 26 “keyholes” of a kilometer or more were possibly on the way to Bennu em 2135. Graças às análises permite-se pela sonda Osiris-Rex, os cientistas podem apenas exclude 24. O últimos must.
According to them, the most likely date for the impact will be in the year 2,182. If that happened, the event would be catastrophic. “Normally, the size of the crater is 10 to 20 times the size of the object,” said Lindley Johnson of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, or, for Bennu, a crater 5 to 10 kilometers in diameter. “But the area of destruction would be much larger than that, up to 100 times the size of the crater,” he said.
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