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Asteroid Bennu DANGER: Will Asteroid Bennu hit Earth? What are NASA's odds of doom?


Bennu is a 78 trillion tonne space rock on a number of potential collision courses with Earth. Between now and the year 2199, there are at least 79 dates on which the asteroid could slam into Earth. According to NASA’s asteroid trackers, the killer asteroid could unleash a devastating blow of 1,200 Megatons (Mt) upon impact. With these terrifying figures in mind, the good news is NASA’s odds of Bennu hitting Earth are pretty slim.

The first potential date on which Bennu could cross paths with our homeward is September 25, 2175.

On this potentially cataclysmic day, estimates a 0.0041 percent chance of an Earth impact or odds of one in 24,000.

In other words, NASA has a 99.9959 percent certainty the space rock will fly past the Earth without contact.

Asteroid Bennu will then swing by the Earth again on September 24, 2176, but the odds of impact are even smaller – 0.00064 percent or one in 160,000.

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The most likely date on which Bennu could swing out of orbit and towards the Earth in the foreseeable future is September 24, 2180.

But even then, the odds of things going south for Earth are about one in 91,000 or a 99.9989 percent chance of a miss.

Asteroid Bennu is an ancient lump of oddly spherical space rock dating back to some of the earliest days of the solar system.

NASA said: “An ancient relic of our solar system’s early days, Bennu has seen more than 4.5 billion years of history.

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“Scientists think that within 10 million years of our solar system’s formation, Bennu’s present-day composition was already established.

“Bennu likely broke off from a much larger carbon-rich asteroid about 700 million to 2 billion years ago.

“It likely formed in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, and has drifted much closer to Earth since then.

Because of the asteroid’s incredibly old history, it has been at the centre of NASA’s asteroid research in recent months.

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On December 31, 2018, NASA made its first approach to the asteroid with its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, after blasting off into in 2016.

Most recently, NASA shared stunning HD photos of the asteroid’s pocked surface, taken from about a mile from Bennu.

NASA aims to collect surface rock samples of Asteroid Bennu at some point in mid-2020.

The rock samples will then return to Earth at some point in 2023 for study.



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