Astronomers spot undetected, possibly dangerous ‘planet killer’ asteroid

A team of researchers have spotted three massive asteroids that have been hiding undetected in the Sun’s glare, one of which is the largest object that could potentially pose a risk to our planet to be spotted in the past eight years.

An announcement of the findings appeared Monday in The Astronomical Journal, detailing three near-Earth asteroids (NEA) that were found using a Dark Energy Camera in Chile.

Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the paper’s lead author, said in a release that two of the NEAs span approximately one kilometre in width — a size that could potentially amount to a “planet killer.”

Space cameras are notoriously bad at capturing deep-field images of objects that are impacted by the Sun’s glare and atmospheric distortions. In this instance, scientists pointed the camera close to the Earth’s horizon during twilight as a combat.

Sheppard says the Earth is safe, for now, as none of the asteroids’ orbits directly line up to threaten a collision with Earth at the moment.

However, that could change.

One asteroid, in particular, called 2022 AP7, is 1.5 kilometres wide and has an orbit that could one day cross Earth’s path, but it’s hard for scientists to predict if, and when, that would happen.

A NEA measuring one kilometre or larger “would have a devastating impact on life as we know it,” Sheppard told CNN.

“It would be a mass extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years,” he said.

In September, NASA charted a spacecraft to smash into a far-off asteroid, in the first-ever attempt to deflect and redirect a space rock.

The experiment, which saw the DART spacecraft collide with an asteroid named Dimorphos, was considered a success in planetary defence, and slightly altered Dimorphos’ orbital trajectory. The experiment’s success means astronomers can now develop an even more robust planetary defence strategy.

(Source: GLOBALNEWS)