Scientists fine-tune odds of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth through 2300 with NASA probe's help

[Admin]

If the possibility of an asteroid called Bennu slamming into Earth a lifetime from now was keeping you up at night, NASA scientists think you can rest a little easier.

Scientists fine-tune odds of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth through 2300 with NASA probe's help : Read more

 

[rod]

The reference paper cited provides many details including Poynting-Robertson affect too. Reference paper, Ephemeris and hazard assessment for near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu based on OSIRIS-REx data, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103521002591?via=ihub, 10-August-2021. My observation. New orbital calculations for Bennu show potential near Earth encounters in 2135 but calculations out to 2300 AD. The details are interesting. This NEA orbits some 0.9 au to close to 1.3 au using various affects like Yarkovsky and Poynting–Robertson on the asteroid's motion. The reference paper says "The orbital period of 1.2 yr puts Bennu close to a 6:5 mean motion resonance with Earth, which has led to three close encounters in 1999, 2005, and 2011."

Asteroids in the main belt orbit some 4.4 years and in theory could complete some 227 million revolutions around the Sun in one billion year period. Asteroids like Bennu, are short lived. Some reports indicate < 10 million years, others < 2 million years in the present positions.

 

[Emely Morris]

Despite the negligible chances of a collision, Bennu, along with 1950 DA, remains one of the most dangerous of the family of near-Earth asteroids, scientists emphasize.

 

[sam85geo]

Fortunately, most of us, if not all of us won't be around to verify the accuracy of these predictions numbers. The morbidity of covid-19 with the delta and lambda variants is of much more pressing concern.