An asteroid discovered last month “has a very small chance of impacting Earth' in 23 years, NASA says. Specifically, there’s a 0.18% chance of it hitting Earth, or a 99.82% chance that the asteroid will streak harmlessly past our planet.
The asteroid 2023 DW was just discovered in late February. But NASA says it's tracking it closely to learn about its orbital path, because the asteroid"has a very small chance of impacting Earth" in 23 years.
The asteroid's diameter is listed at nearly 50 meters — roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. It takes 271 days to orbit the sun.that, after a new object is first discovered,"it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future."
As for how small the chance of impact is currently estimated to be, NASA puts it at"1 in 560 odds of impact." Put another way, there is only a 0.18% chance of hitting Earth, or a 99.82% chance that the asteroid will streak harmlessly past our planet.— a roster of 1,450 near-Earth objects"for which a non-zero impact probability has been computed."Even if the asteroid were to strike our planet, it wouldn't be expected to create a broadly cataclysmic event.
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