Rock samples arrived from Bennu on Sunday, but this famous asteroid has been the subject of much talk in recent days, as if it could hit Earth in the future and cause destruction over large areas. But fortunately, the situation is not so bad, the probability is very low and many technologies may appear in 160 years.

Bennu and the very small probability of “Armageddon” on Earth

Asteroid Bennu may hit Earth on an autumn day in 2182, the probability is 1 in 2700 or 0.037%. This is a possibility, but a very small one, as NASA officials noted when they announced the possibility of an impact.

Asteroid Bennu was discovered in 1999 and named by a 9-year-old who won the competition in 2013. Bennu is a much friendlier name than “1999 RQ36,” as the 500-meter-wide asteroid used to be called.

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Thanks to the Osiris Rex probe, which spent several years orbiting Bennu and took samples from it in 2020, we know a lot about this “space boulder” that approaches Earth on its celestial path once every six years.

The trajectory of the asteroid before and after 2135 could be calculated with amazing accuracy, so it was also possible to calculate the probability that Bennu would hit somewhere on Earth on September 24, 2182. The probability is 1 in 2700. In 2021, a large-scale study appeared on Bennu.

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If Bennu were to collide with Earth, it is estimated that a crater with a diameter of 5-10 km would be formed, and the devastated area could be 100 times the size of the crater.

We have plenty of time to prepare if needed

Bennu could hit with the force of 22 atomic bombs, but it would be much less destructive than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It was about 20 times larger.

However, the calculated chances of an impact are very small, and by then, which is 159 years from now, astronomers will have made new calculations, and the date with possible problems could be further and further away.

• The Osiris Rex probe will launch on Sunday on a mission to Apophis, an asteroid that was once thought to crash into Earth

Then we must not forget that much will change in the chapter of technologies for deflecting dangerous asteroids in a century and a half. NASA has shown that the trajectory of an asteroid can be changed, and in the next 150 years there will be time to conduct dozens of tests on various asteroids.

The private sector also plans to mine asteroids, so research to be conducted in this area could also help if there is a real threat of a large asteroid hitting Earth.

If Bennu ever gets hit, we can be ready for it with a few impactors to change his trajectory.

In 160 years, the technologies available to humanity will change a lot. 20 years ago, not even the first iPhone was released, and 160 years ago, there were no cars or even railways in all European countries.

NASA has a list of celestial objects that could pose a danger to Earth, but we can be sure that no major collisions with asteroids are expected in the next 100 years.

Calculations of possible celestial bodies that could collide with Earth are done and reworked with varying results. For example, in 2004, it was announced that an asteroid called Apophis was at risk of colliding with our planet in 2029. Calculations made in 2021 showed that Apophis, although it will come close to Earth in 2029, will NOT hit the planet. The passage of Apophis will also “greet” the Osiris probe, which will approach and explore it six years later. The probe began its mission on Sunday, 20 minutes after releasing the sample capsule from Bennu.

Bennu, the giant boulder from which NASA has now delivered pebbles to Earth, probably broke off from a larger, carbon-rich asteroid more than 700 million years ago and originally formed in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Over these hundreds of millions of years, Bennu came much closer to Earth, and this proximity also made NASA’s Osiris Rex mission possible.

NASA also chose Benna because it is a celestial body that contains very old material, with some mineral fragments likely older than the Solar System. “These microscopic dust particles could be the same ones that were ejected by dying stars and eventually coalesced to form the Sun and planets nearly 4.6 billion years ago,” says NASA, which has compiled a list of ten reasons why Bennu was chosen for Osiris Rex. mission.