Astronomers say they have discovered the largest killer-sized asteroid in eight years, and the massive space rock will cross Earth’s orbit.
The asteroid, named 2022 AP7, was reported by researchers looking for space rocks within the orbits of Earth and Venus.
Writing in the Astronomical Journal, lead study author Scott Sheppard and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington say they have found three “larger” asteroids, one of which, 2022 AP7, crosses Earth’s orbit, making it a potentially dangerous asteroid. (PHA).
With a diameter of between 1.1 km and 2.3 km, the team says 2022 AP7 is the largest PHA discovered since 2014 and likely within the 5% largest ever found.
“Any asteroid larger than 1 km in size is considered a planet killer,” Sheppard said, adding that if such an object were to hit Earth, the impact would be devastating to life as we know it, with dust and pollutants released into the atmosphere, where it would last for years.
“It is likely that the Earth’s surface would cool significantly if sunlight did not reach the planet. It would be a mass extinction event the likes of which has not been seen on Earth in millions of years,” he said.
While the finding of 2022 AP7 may bring to mind visions of the asteroid Armageddon depicted in the movie Don’t Look Up, the study also offers reassurance.
“It currently has no chance of hitting Earth,” Sheppard said, noting that 2022 AP7 currently crosses Earth’s orbit when Earth is on the far side of the sun.
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Sheppard added that slowly, over time, the asteroid will begin to cross Earth’s orbit closer to where our planet is. But, he said, “that will be centuries in the future, and we don’t know AP7 2022’s orbit precisely enough to say much about its dangers centuries from now.”
Sheppard said the team hopes to find “a few more” near-Earth planet-killing objects 1 kilometer in size or larger in the next year or two through their survey work, which uses the Blanco telescope four meters in Chile.
Jay Tate, the director of the National Near Earth Objects Information Center in central Wales, told the Guardian he wasn’t losing sleep over AP7 2022, adding that Earth was actually a very small target. “For now, anyway, the probability of impact is pretty low. I wouldn’t say negligible, but pretty low.”
In September, Nasa launched its Dart mission, launching a spacecraft at an asteroid in an attempt to deflect the latter from its orbit. The mission was an attempt to test technology that could be used to deal with space rocks that pose a threat to Earth. Last month, researchers confirmed that Dart had been a success.
Tate said an approach like Dart might not be suitable for 2022 AP7, given the asteroid’s size, but there were other possible methods.
“That said, we have plenty of time,” he said, adding that it might be possible to use multiple Dard-like impacts to change the asteroid’s path a little at a time.