Reports surfaced last year.
Over the past few months, countless news outlets have been reporting that a previously so-called "lost"
asteroid could hit Earth this year, supposedly citing warnings from Nasa itself.
Now, however, a Nasa spokesperson has spoken out to confirm whether or not the asteroid - titled 2007 FT3 - will hit earth in the coming months causing mass destruction.
Spoiler: It’s really not that bad.
Speaking to the
London Evening Standard, a Nasa spokesperson explained: “There are no known asteroid impact threats to Earth at any time in the next century. Nasa and its partners diligently watch the skies to find, track and categorise asteroids and near-Earth objects, including those that may come close to Earth.
“An important note here is planetary scientists define asteroid approaches that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit as close approaches.
“The larger an asteroid is, the easier it is for our planetary defence experts to find, meaning that their orbits around the sun are usually very well-known and understood for years or even decades.”
Nasa confirms if ‘lost’ asteroid will hit Earth in 2024
A report from Nasa in November confirmed that 13 asteroids came closer to us than the Moon in the last 30 days (at the time of the document). That number rose to 110 in the past year.
In that period, no alarms were sounded.
Articles regarding asteroids potentially crashing into Earth come about every other month.
Back in 2019, for example, news stories were published warning of a potential apocalyptic event due to 2007 FT3 hitting our planet that year.
Of course, this did not happen.
The asteroid was spotted in March 2007 with Nasa listing 89 potential impacts between it and Earth from October 3 this year to October 4, 2119.
However, every one of these had a Torino scale rating of zero which means it presents “no hazard” whatsoever and the likelihood of a collision is “zero, or is so low that it is effectively zero”.
So chances are, we have nothing to worry about at all. At least, from outside of our planet.
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