According to NASA’s Pan-Earth Defense Coordination Office, an asteroid could hit the Earth within 23 years. And it’s not exactly “small”: the asteroid would be about the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. To make matters worse, the possible impact would be on Valentine’s Day.
Discovered last February 26, this asteroid of almost 50 meters in diameter follows a trajectory that implies a risk of collision with the Earth. As NASA’s own Twitter account explains, “when new objects are discovered, several weeks of study are needed to reduce uncertainty and predict their orbit in the future. Analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update their predictions as more data becomes available.”
At the moment, the closest point of the asteroid 2023 DW (that’s how they call it) with the Earth will be February 1, 2046. Specifically, the distance between the two celestial bodies would be 1.8 million kilometers.
On the other hand, the asteroid was discovered by the MAP San Pedro de Atacama Observatory and its diameter is approximately 49 meters. It currently has an orbital period of 271 days and circulates at a speed relative to the sun of 24.63 kilometers per second. The space rock is the only object on NASA’s risk list to score 1 out of 10 on the Turin scale. To put it in context, all other objects and bodies identified by the organization rank 0.
However, there is no need (yet) to throw our hands up in the air. Rank 1 on the Turin scale indicates that “objects have some danger of collision” but that “the probability is extremely low”. On the other hand, rank 0 indicates that “the probability of collision is zero, or so low as to be practically zero”.
