Researchers determined Bennu’s total impact probability between now and the year 2300 at about one in 1,750, or 0.057 percent. “We shouldn’t be worried about it too much.”įarnocchia said the risk from Bennu “is smaller than from the undiscovered population of objects of similar size.” “The impact probability overall is very small,” he stressed. “We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before,” said Farnocchia, lead author of a study published in the journal Icarus. “The OSIRIS-REx data give us so much more precise information, we can test the limits of our models and calculate the future trajectory of Bennu to a very high degree of certainty through 2135,” said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist with the Center for Near Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Scientists want to figure out how Earth’s gravity and a phenomenon known as the Yarkovsky effect will affect its future trajectory and the potential for an impact on a subsequent orbit. It will make a close approach with Earth in September 2135. The rocks and dust collected by OSIRIS-REx are scheduled to return to Earth on September 24, 2023.īennu was discovered in 1999 and is classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid. For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.
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