It has a diameter of 500 meters and is moving towards Earth at a speed of 100,000 km / h. Asteroid Bennu will pass very close to us in 2135, but the likelihood of its collision is still very small.
NASA reported this week that in just 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 “likely” 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 evaluations
The Osiris-Rex probe from the US space agency spent two years in orbit around Bennu and flew off last May to recover samples collected during contact with Earth, which lasted for several seconds.
The samples are due to reach Earth in 2023. The mission made it possible to study the asteroid more closely and significantly improve the predictions of its future trajectory.
Scientists concluded that in 2300 the probability of collision with the Earth was only 0.057%. “In other words, this means that there is a 99.94 percent chance that Bennu is off course,” said David Farnokchia, a scientist with NASA’s Near Earth Objects Division. “So you don’t have to worry too much.”
“Gravity Keyhole”
The fact is that in September 2135 Bennu will pass near the Earth. This will give you the opportunity to cross the so-called “gravitational keyhole”: an area that, due to the gravitational influence of our planet, will slightly change the course of the asteroid and, thus, put it on a trajectory. future collision.
Before the Osiris-Rex mission, there were probably 26 keyholes on the way to Benn in 2135, each one kilometer or more in size.
According to them, the most likely date of the strike is 2182. If this happened, the event would be catastrophic. “Typically, a crater is 10 to 20 times the size of an 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 will be much larger, up to 100 times larger than the crater,” he said.
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