Even though NASA recently announced that the DART mission had been a success, which implied changing the trajectory of an asteroid, news about potentially hazardous space rocks can’t possibly leave us unmoved.
The largest asteroid in 8 years was just discovered by astronomers. Its name is 2022 AP7, it measures 1.5 kilometers across, and giving us shivers is its game.
Our descendants should worry, but not us
The newfound asteroid could pose a threat to us someday, but not in the near future. Judging by its imposing size, the outcome of an impact would be catastrophic for the world. Two other asteroids were found, along with the one that could hit Earth someday. Luckily, the paths of those other two asteroids in question are closer to the Sun than to our planet. That means that there’s pretty much no chance for them to hit Earth.
Scott S. Sheppard, the leader of the research team responsible for the discovery, explained about the two asteroids that were discovered along with 2022 AP7, as ScienceAlert quotes:
So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers,
There are likely only a few near-Earth asteroids with similar sizes left to find, and these large undiscovered asteroids likely have orbits that keep them interior to the orbits of Earth and Venus most of the time. Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely within Earth’s orbit have been discovered to date because of the difficulty of observing near the glare of the Sun.
Asteroid 2022 AP7 was hiding in the Sun’s glare, which made it so difficult for astronomers to discover the space rock until now. The space rock needs 5 years to make a complete orbit around the Sun.
The new study explaining the discovery of the three asteroids was published in The Astronomical Journal.
