Asteroid QV89 will come barreling past our home planet on the morning of September 9, 2019. Astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey first discovered the rocky object flying around the Sun in August 2006. Nearly 13 years later and the space rock has been placed on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) list of potential impactors. But does this mean the asteroid is headed on an unavoidable collision course with our home planet?
Asteroid 2006 QV89 is a 131ft-wide (40m) rock orbiting the Sun once every 474.4 days.
The space rock is comparable in size to the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, or five London double-decker buses.
An asteroid this big could cause considerable damage if it struck the Earth or disintegrated in the atmosphere.
When a 65.6ft-wide (20m) exploded over Russia’s Chelyabinsk Oblast in 2013, more than 1,000 people were injured by blown out windows.
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Thankfully for us, this time around, ESA has classified QV89 a “no hazard” object.
According to astronomer Eddie Irizarry of the Astronomical Society of the Caribbean, the asteroid is not a danger and not a priority for observations for ESA.
The astronomer wrote for EarthSky: “As we’ve said many times before, and as is still true, as of now, there’s no known dangerous asteroid that poses any imminent risk of Earth impact.
“Could an asteroid strike Earth? Of course. That’s why astronomers continue to be watchful.
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“Bottom line: Asteroid 2006 QV89 has been unfairly hyped as posing a threat to Earth in September 2019.
“In fact, it’s one of many asteroids on astronomers’ risk list but it’s not classified as a priority task. It’s classified as ‘no hazard’.”
And according to NASA’s own calculations, there is a 99.989 percent chance the asteroid will miss us in September.
So, what is so special about this asteroid? Absolutely nothing.
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Asteroid QV89 is a prime example of an Apollo-type rock flying around the inner circles of the solar system.
Apollo-type asteroids and comets are confined within the boundaries of the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter and follow an orbit similar to Asteroid 1862 Apollo.
Many of these space rocks are so-called “Near-Earth Objects” or NEO and often cross paths with the Earth.
However, rarely do these asteroids hit the planet and astronomers are not aware of any object, which will hit our planet in the foreseeable future.
Mr Irizarry said: “Many asteroids temporarily appear in a risk list due to uncertainties in their orbits.
“These sorts of uncertainties typically occur when an object has been recently discovered by observatories, and seen only during a few nights after the discovery, afterwards becoming too faint to observe.”
When an asteroid reappears on radars, astronomers can get a better glimpse of the rock’s speed and trajectory.
This helps scientists narrow down the odds of impact for hundreds of years into the future.
