Ever heard an asteroid is going to drop on Earth and will result in good harm? For years there have been several predictions with regards to the asteroid Apophis that was anticipated to crash on Earth, on the other hand, as per the most recent study by NASA, the possibility has been ruled out for the next one hundred years. The asteroid was found back in 2004 and was named immediately after the Egyptian god of chaos and darkness. NASA had believed the asteroid to be one of the greatest threats to the planet Earth. However, the space agency now ruling out this possibility has come as a sigh of relief.
It is to note that asteroids are identified as rocky objects orbiting the Sun but are smaller sized than planets. Some could even term them as minor planets which had been formed throughout the formation of the solar program more than 4.6 billion years ago. According to NASA, as several as 994,383 asteroids are present in the solar program as the remnants. Among 3 categories of asteroids, this one belongs to the Near-Earth Asteroids that have orbits passing close to the Earth. There are a minimum of 10,000 asteroids which are identified to cross close to the Earth with 1,400 of them becoming classified as potentially hazardous asteroids. Apophis, as the name suggests, is one of these.
To be positive, the asteroid is 340 metres huge. Earlier, the space agency predicted the asteroid to come threateningly close to our planet and this was anticipated in the years 2029 and 2036. However, NASA ruled it out later. This was not it. The worry of a feasible collision in 2068 nonetheless persisted. The asteroid also flew previous Earth this year on March 5 and it came inside 17 million km of the planet. Thanks to this, scientists utilised their radar observations and studied in detail the orbit of this asteroid about the sun.
Fortunately, the findings indicate that Apophis could not collide with Earth even in 2068 and extended immediately after. According to a statement by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), the effect threat has been ruled out for at least the next one hundred years. Therefore, the agency is now removing Apophis from the threat list. Notably, CNEOS maintains a Sentry Impact Risk Table, also identified as the threat list, which contains the facts of an asteroid that orbits close to Earth.
Meanwhile, Apophis is anticipated to strategy Earth once again in 2029 and will be in close proximity of 32,000 km. Stargazers would be in a position to see the asteroid eight years from now in Asia, Africa and some components of Europe. And this can be noticed without having the use of binoculars or telescopes.