2022 Shows There's Never Been A Better Chance Of An Asteroid Strike

The odds of an asteroid disaster in our lifetime just keep getting better and better and this latest asteroid, dubbed 2022 AE1 is no exception. Until now, the closest odds have been 1 in 18,400. With this new asteroid, those odds are back to looking tempting.

Until earlier this year, Asteroid Bennu was thought to be our earliest threat from space as experts believe it could strike Earth in 2182. Now the biggest and earliest threat comes from 2022 AE1.

July 4th, 2023 Could Be A Disaster

Even though 2022 AE1 is considered to be rather small at 70 meters in diameter, it is on its’ way toward Earths’ orbit and a possible collision with the planet in less than a year. That time frame is alarming. While there will be plenty of calculating and recalculating the trajectory, there’s not enough time to prepare to do anything about 2022 AE1 coming close to the planet.

While the scientific world studies 2022 AE1, it remains on its’ course and is hurtling toward earth at an incredible speed. Asteroid 2022 AE1 is traveling through the stars on its’ way toward earth, at 43,200 miles per hour.

What would an asteroid, even a smaller one of this size, do to the Earth if it were to strike our planet? Even a smaller asteroid traveling at the incredible speed of over 40 thousand miles per hour would destroy a significant part of what it hits. A city like New York would be wiped off the map.

What Are The Chances It’ll Hit?

The ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Center has a system called AstOD, or Asteroid Orbit Determination. It watches for asteroids and rates the danger of the 230ft wide AE1 and other asteroids.

The system then calculates where each object is on the Palermo Scale, which rates the hazard. It takes into account the probability of an impact, the kinetic yield of the object. The system estimates the damage to the planet based on its size and speed.

A zero on the Palermo scale indicates the background hazard level, so anything that shows positive reading warrants the space community’s immediate attention.

Notifications of NEOs with readings between -2.0 and -1.5 occur a few times a year according to Luca Conversi, the Manager of the NEOCC. When AE1 was examined on the Palermo scale and received a rating of -1.5. Over the first five days after it was discovered its rating moved up the scale, causing more concerns and tensions due to the short period before it’s believed intercept with Earth.

AE1 for the time being doesn’t appear to be a threat according to NASA, which rates its’ overall chances of striking Earth at just 1 in 1500. For context, that is now the most likely candidate to strike Earth, even though NASA reports it should pass by at approximately 6 million miles.

Conclusion

The ESA is the European Space Agency and they did the initial calculations. So, if we are to believe the later calculations then the ESA was off by as much as 6 million miles. That’s not a small margin of error by any means.

If it was going to hit us next year, with no time to prepare to try stopping the event, and little plans in place to prepare the public for such a horrific event, would we be told? It wouldn’t serve a clear purpose to inform people today that it was going to happen, especially not without a definitive location for people to be prepared to evacuate from at a given point in time. It most likely would create nothing more than panic and chaos.

Our home remains in the center of the biggest target in any shooting gallery imagined. It will remain there for the foreseeable future, as more and more of these “close-calls” occur. So, keep paying attention to the news, stay aware, and follow me for updates as they come along.