A new asteroid may collide with Earth! Could it be a mass extinction?

The asteroid, which is 1.5 kilometers wide, is one of the large space rocks recently discovered in Earth’s orbits. was his title 2022 AP7 It is located on the other side of the sun.

He and two others were identified using the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, which is described in a study published September 29 in the Astronomical Journal.

Understand more about this devastating asteroid, its collision possibilities, and what is being done to avoid it.

Read more: Asteroid Map: The simulator shows asteroid damage in any region of the planet

The possibility of destroying the earth has been determined

Scientists and world superpowers are constantly investing in the possibilities of preventing space disasters. The study’s lead author, Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., said these asteroids could generate a complete extinction if they collide with Earth. They monitor it through the Dark Energy Camera of the Cerro Tololo Víctor M. Blanco Telescope 4 meters deep in the Solar System.

Because the sun’s glare is intense, the observations only occur in two 10-minute twilight windows. Because of this difficulty, in addition to the 25 asteroids that have already been identified within Earth’s orbit, there are still many others that are unknown.

NASA’s space agency tracks and tags any object within 193 million kilometers from Earth. The trajectories of all NEOs have already been estimated by the end of the century. So far Earth has not faced any danger of a terrible collision, which does not rule out the possibility, but this does not mean that they have stopped looking and are already looking for ways to keep potential collisions away.