Scientists have discovered a large asteroid within Earth’s orbit that was previously unseen because it was hidden by the sun’s glare.
In a study published in The Astronomical Journal, scientists using the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile said they found a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid called 2022 AP7 within the Earth’s orbit that could someday be in our planet’s path.
Finding the asteroid, despite its size, was difficult because it was hidden by the glare of the Sun. Astronomers typically point equipment, such as the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, away from the Sun to protect the sensitive equipment, Space.com explained. In a news release accompanying the study, NOIRLab explained that astronomers have only two 10-minute windows each night during which they can survey the inner solar system.
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“Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids,” said Scott S. Sheppard, the study’s lead author. “So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers.”
The asteroid is described as a “planet killer” because it would “have a devastating effect on life as we know it,” Sheppard told CNN. “It would be a mass extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years.”
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Astronomers are currently monitoring more than 2,200 potentially hazardous asteroids that orbit close to Earth and are wider than 1 kilometer, Space.com reported. However, there are no asteroids that pose a current threat.
“There is an extremely low probability of an impact in the foreseeable future,” Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, who was not involved in the study, told The New York Times.
In September, NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in the first-ever planetary defense test. The test was designed to see if it is possible to move a killer space rock out of the direction of our planet, and NASA scientists deemed the experiment a success.
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The study that revealed 2022 AP7 also revealed two other asteroids with orbits safely outside of both Earth and Venus. One of the asteroids, called 2021 PH27, is the closest known asteroid to the sun and during its orbit, its surface gets hot enough to melt lead.