The likes of NASA have made great strides in discovering near-Earth objects that are over one kilometre (0.6 miles) in size, with 90 percent now accounted for. However, that means there are still 10 percent of dangerous asteroids that have not been spotted.
Now the first deputy director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Yury Urlichich, has revealed the chances of a major asteroid hitting Earth.
Mr Urlich said: “There is a less than one percent chance that something can approach the Earth.”
NASA experts have warned there is a “100 percent” chance an asteroid will hit our world in the future, although now in the foreseeable centuries.
Greg Leonard, a senior research specialist at Catalina Sky Survey – a NASA funded project supported by the Near Earth Object Observation Program (NEOO) – told Bryan Walsh for the latter’s new book End Times: “I know the chances of me dying in an asteroid impact is less than dying from a lightning strike.
“But I also know that if we do nothing, sooner or later, there’s a one hundred percent chance that one will get us. So I feel privileged to be doing something.”
The asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago was believed to be up to 16 kilometres wide.
However, NASA has revealed that a much smaller asteroid has the ability to cause chaos on the planet.
The space agency said a space rock of just a kilometre (0.6 miles) wide has the potential to cause chaos across the planet.
NASA said: “An individual’s chance of being killed by a meteorite is small, but the risk increases with the size of the impacting comet or asteroid, with the greatest risk associated with global catastrophes resulting from impacts of objects larger than 1 kilometre.”
However, the space agency moved to reassure frightened minds, stating that it is not predicting a major asteroid strike of that size for several centuries.
The space boffins said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
NASA is currently studying Asteroid Bennu, where its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft arrived in 2018.
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Its OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft is gathering information about the space rock, which is 500 metres in length.
NASA fears the asteroid, which has the potential to wipe out an entire country on Earth, could hit our planet within the next 120 years, with the next close flyby in 2135.
The mission will give vital information on how to deflect asteroids from their collision course with Earth.
But NASA reiterated, while there is a small chance Earth could be impacted, “over millions of years, of all of the planets, Bennu is most likely to hit Venus.”
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