The newly discovered asteroid “Planet Killer” could one day threaten the earth

Astronomers have spotted a “planet-killing” asteroid crossing Earth’s orbit that could slowly move closer and closer to us in centuries.

Measuring about 1.1 km to 2.3 km in diameter, the asteroid, named 2022 AP7, is the largest potentially Earth-threatening object discovered in the past eight years, the team said.

It is also likely to be in the top 5 percent of the largest known potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).

The asteroid was discovered by researchers using the Dark Energy Camera in Chile to search for objects in the orbits of Earth and Venus. They described their results in an article in The Astronomical Journal, published in September.

“Our twilight survey scans the area inside the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids,” said lead author Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Earth and Planets Laboratory.

“So far we’ve found two large near-Earth asteroids about 1 kilometer across, a size we call planet killers,” he said in an opinion.

In addition to 2022 AP7, the team also discovered two other near-Earth asteroids, named 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, whose orbits should certainly remain fully within Earth’s orbit and never tumble into their orbit.

Planet killer has “currently no chance of hitting Earth”

The term “planet killer” might sound scary, but as far as 2022 AP7 goes, Sheppard says it will remain “far away” from Earth for now.

“It has no chance of hitting Earth right now,” he told Euronews Next in an email.

As things stand, 2022 AP7 will cross Earth orbit. This makes it a potentially dangerous asteroid, he said.

However, the crossing comes at a time when Earth is on the other side of the sun, he explained, adding that this configuration will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

“Slowly, over time, the asteroid will begin to intersect Earth’s orbit closer to where Earth is, but this will be centuries in the future and we don’t know the orbit of 2022 AP7 accurately enough, to say much about their dangers centuries now,” he said.

“But for now, 2022 AP7 will remain far from Earth.”

“It would be a mass extinction”

If an asteroid 1km or larger were to hit Earth, it would have devastating effects on life as we know it, Sheppard said.

Dust and pollutants kicked up into the atmosphere would remain there for years, likely meaning the Earth’s surface would cool significantly as sunlight doesn’t reach the planet, he said.

“It would be a mass extinction not seen on Earth for millions of years.”

The question of how to protect the Earth from possible collisions of space objects recently made headlines NASA confirmed that the spacecraft that smashed it into an asteroid in September had managed to knock the object out of its natural orbit.

The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was the first test of a planetary defense system designed to prevent a possible collision of a doomsday meteorite with Earth, and was the first time mankind demonstrated the movement of a natural body in space changed.

Asteroids lurk in the sun’s glare

The three newly announced asteroids are part of an elusive population lurking in the orbits of Earth and Venus, the research team said. It’s a notoriously challenging region for observations, they said, because asteroid hunters struggle with the harsh sunlight.

But astronomers were able to tackle this by taking measurements during two 10-minute windows at night.

“Probably only a few [near-Earth asteroids] with similar sizes yet to be found, and these large undiscovered asteroids likely have orbits that keep them within the orbits of Earth and Venus most of the time,” Sheppard said.

“To date, only about 25 asteroids have been discovered whose orbit is entirely within Earth’s orbit because it is difficult to observe them near the glaring sun.”

Sheppard said he and his team weren’t surprised by their findings “as we know some of these planet-killing asteroids are still out there and have yet to be discovered.”

In fact, they expect to find a few more planet killers or larger near-Earth Objects (NEOs) over the next year or two.

“To date, we believe there are about 1,000 NEOs larger than 1 km,” he said, adding that researchers have discovered about 95 percent of them in the past decade.