The asteroid has made several close approaches to Earth in the past and is expected to make at least three more over the next three decades, according to spacereference.org. 1994 XD is not the Last modified on Tue 7 Feb 2023 07.16 EST. An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will pass Earth in one of the closest such encounters ever recorded – coming within a tenth of the distance of In brief. For a few tense days this January, a roughly 70-metre asteroid became the riskiest observed in over a decade. Despite the Moon’s attempt to scupper observations, the asteroid is now known to be entirely safe. *Join ESA, NASA and Asteroid Day LIVE from 19:00 CET this evening in "Killing asteroids - with the experts", to find out more*. Jupiter might absorb most of the asteroid and comet strikes in the Solar System, but it also results in a net increase in the number of Earth impact that occur by about 350%. Without diversion intervention, Tanaka explained, if the Ryugu asteroid was heading to Earth and entered the planet's atmosphere at an angle of 45 degrees and at a speed of around 38,000 miles per Apophis is a near-Earth asteroid, meaning its orbit around the Sun brings it within 1.3 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Its full name is Apophis 99942. After Apophis was discovered in 2004, the asteroid was given a 2.7% chance of hitting Earth in 2029, causing a great deal of media attention. It also for a time had a small chance This asteroid will spend a significant amount of time near the Earth for the next millennium. may hit the Earth in the next hundred or a thousand years, but if we are to survive long-term, we According to NASA's OSIRIS-REx science team, the asteroid which was first discovered in 1999, could possibly drift into our planet's orbit and could hit Earth by September 24, 2182. Asteroid Bennu NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft got approved for a second mission to study asteroid Apophis when it makes a close flyby of Earth in 2029. After dropping off an asteroid sample to Earth, a NASA spacecraft is on a new adventure to intersect the asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian spirit of chaos, as it makes a close approach to Earth in 2029 And a provocative new study suggests they are bigger than previously thought—meaning Earth is more at risk of getting hit hard, says James Garvin, chief scientist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who presented the work last week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. “It would be in the range of serious crap happening.”. QJIlEN0.