Asteroid Bennu. (Image: NASA)
It’s a doomsday scenario par excellence: an asteroid wiping out life on Earth. At least, it is not excluded that the Bennu rock will collide with our planet.
It would be better for our grandchildren to mark themselves in red in the calendar of September 24, 2182. On this day, according to the latest calculations, Bennu will hit the Earth. Bennu is the second most dangerous asteroid in the solar system. As announced by NASA, the probability of an engagement is currently one in 2,700, which is about 0.037 percent. The chance of a collision by 2300 is one chance in 1750.
The large, half-kilometre-wide, spinning-shaped space rock is one of the most dangerous asteroids known in our solar system. It has only 1,950 DA in front of it, and it has a 0.3% chance of hitting the ground. However, not until March 16, 2880. By that time it should have long been clear whether or not Bennu found his way to Earth. However, more is known about Bennu, as a space probe orbited the asteroid for years on NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission. A sample was also taken of Bennus Regolith, the material that forms on the cracks of rocks in the Solar System through various processes. The average diameter of the asteroid is about 492 meters.
Many factors play a role
Based on these samples, which are expected to reach Earth on September 24, 2023, new data must be determined that will show Bennu’s path and thus also the chances of entering Earth more accurately. It should be possible to calculate Bennu’s trajectory very precisely by the year 2135. “We’ve never modeled the trajectory of an asteroid with this precision before,” Sage David Farnokia From the Center for Terrestrial Bear Body Studies (CNEOS) operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “The speed of the collision only increased slightly,” he added, but that wouldn’t be a big change.
In order to predict Bennu’s path through the solar system as accurately as possible, many factors must be taken into account. The team had to model the gravitational interactions between the asteroid, the sun, other planets and satellites, as well as more than 300 other space rocks and solar wind pressure. Until 2182, several generations of scientists will still have the opportunity to refine the calculations down to the smallest detail.
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