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Pushing The Limits Predicting The Next Asteroid Impact
Pasadena - Apr 5, 2002 Applying unprecedented refinements to the analysis of celestial hazards, NASA astronomers have identified a potential close encounter with Earth more than eight centuries in the future by an asteroid two-thirds of a mile (one kilometer) wide. What will most likely be a miss, even without preventive measures, will come on March 16, 2880, said Jon Giorgini, a senior engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Odds for a collision are at most one in 300, and probably even more remote, based on what is known about the asteroid so far. Still, that makes this space rock, named 1950 DA, a greater hazard than any other known asteroid. "This is not something to worry about," said Giorgini, leader of a team reporting about the asteroid in the April 5 edition of the journal Science. "We're showing that searches with optical telescopes and follow-up observations with radar telescopes can provide us centuries of advance notice about potential close encounters of asteroids with Earth. That's plenty of time to consider the options -- 35 generations, in fact." "This report is a success story for our efforts to identify potential troublemakers," said JPL's Dr. Don Yeomans, manager of the NASA Near Earth Object Program. "Radar observations are helping us push predictions 5 to 10 times further into the future." This report differs from previous ones about other asteroids' Earth-impact potential. Estimates of impact risks in earlier cases came from a few nights' optical observations of newly found asteroids. Astronomers soon ruled out the possible impacts after a few more observations narrowed uncertainties about the asteroids' orbits.
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