Oops, Say Asteroid Watchers
Scientists who announced last week that a mysterious space object had a 1-in-500 chance of striking the Earth in 30 years have retracted their prediction, saying it poses little threat.
The object, which is either a small asteroid or piece of space junk, has virtually no chance of hitting the planet in 2030. However, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said there's a 1-in-1,000 chance it could hit Earth in 2071.
"This object is much more interesting than threatening," said Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program.
Scientists downgraded the chance of a collision in 2030 after examining additional observations. The new data "effectively ruled out the chance of an Earth impact in that year," according to the program's Web site.
Predictions of the path of the object now indicate it will pass no closer than 2.7 million miles to Earth - about 11 times the distance from the Earth to the moon.
The object, designated 2000 SG344, is either an asteroid about 200 feet in diameter or a 35-foot-long Apollo-era rocket booster. It was discovered Sept. 29 through a telescope in Hawaii.
Before the new data was revealed, Yeomans had said that if the object was an asteroid it could create a "fairly sizable nuclear blast" if it struck the Earth.
The retraction and downgrading was the second embarrassing asteroid announcement in recent years. Scientists at the Minor Planets Center in Cambridge, Mass., generated headlines worldwide in 1998 when they announced that a mile-wide asteroid had a chance of hitting Earth in 2028. The prediction was retracted a day later when further calculations were made by JPL.
That incident led the International Astronomical Union to create new guidelines for announcing events of such magnitude. New rules call for announcements to be made after astronomers reach a consensus that a risk to the planet exists and states that an announcement be made publicly within 72 hours of such findings.
Yeomans said the new observations were released Friday shortly after he held a news conference.
"We followed the rules to the letter," he said. "I have no regrets. I'd do the same thing again."
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