Even if the skies look peaceful when you look at them with the naked eye or by using a powerful telescope, you can never know when a major threat could emerge out of nowhere. The Universe is far too big for us humans to scan it entirely.
NASA has been doing a pretty good job at looking for asteroids that could turn out to be dangerous for Earth. But not even the American space agency is able to monitor the entire sky, and it’s understandable.
The 2022 AE1 asteroid will NOT hit Earth
According to Phys.org, initial observations of the 2022 AE1 asteroid had astronomers very concerned. They believed that there was a chance for the space rock to “kiss” our planet in July 2023. Later on, new observations done with the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC) of the European Space Agency (ESA) bring great news: the chances for an impact are severely going down.
Astronomers confirmed that there’s no need to worry about the 2022 AE1 asteroid anymore. It won’t hit our planet.
Here’s what Marco Micheli has to say, an astronomer from NEOCC, as quoted by Phys.org:
In January this year, we became aware of an asteroid with the highest ranking on the Palermo scale that we’ve seen in more than a decade, reaching -1.5,
In my almost ten years at ESA I’ve never seen such a risky object. It was a thrill to track 2022 AE1 and refine its trajectory until we had enough data to say for certain, this asteroid will not strike.
Asteroids are nothing but leftovers from the formation of our Solar System. The force of Jupiter’s gravity can sometimes pull asteroids away from their asteroid belt, causing them to hurtle towards us at great speed.
