Deputy head of NASA Thomas Zurbuchen said that none of the asteroids known to specialists in the next 100 years threatens to collide with the Earth.
On Wednesday, November 24, NASA plans to launch the DART space probe to the Dimorph asteroid. According to the idea, the spacecraft will have to crash into an asteroid to test the technology of protecting our planet from a possible collision with an asteroid in the future.
"This asteroid is not now and will not be a threat to Earth. None of the objects known to us today is a threat in the next hundred years or so," the representative of the corporation said.
According to him, experts know only about 40% of objects larger than 140 meters, and the remaining 60% "we still have to find."
The launch of DART on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle is scheduled for 9:20 Moscow time on Wednesday. The very collision of the spacecraft with the asteroid is scheduled for September-October next year.
On November 16, Anatoly Zaitsev, General Director of the Center for Planetary Protection, assessed the danger from the asteroid 2016 JG12 approaching the Earth.
According to the expert, the specified space object was discovered back in 2016, and in five years it has been approaching the Earth for the second or third time. The asteroid, according to Zaitsev, is not in the database of potentially dangerous objects.
On the same day, NASA's Near-Earth Object Research Center reported that a potentially dangerous asteroid was approaching the Earth. The space object under the designation 2016 JG12 flew on November 20 at a distance of 5.5 million km at a speed of 7.48 km/s. The diameter of the asteroid, according to scientists, ranged from 83 to 190 m.
