‘Planet killer’ asteroid spotted that poses distant risk to Earth

The Victor M. Blanco 4m Telescope dome houses a Dark Energy Camera that detects asteroids that orbit between Earth and the Sun. PHOTO: NYTIMES

NEW YORK - Astronomers on the hunt for modestly sized asteroids that could vaporise a city or bulkier beasts that could sterilise Earth’s surface have spotted a new potential threat. But there is no immediate need to worry – it will be many generations before it may pose a danger to our planet.

Detecting uncharted space rocks relies on spying sunlight glinting off their surfaces. But some asteroids occupy corners of the sky in which the Sun’s glare smothers them, and, like embers flitting in front of a thermonuclear bonfire, they fade from view.

In 2021, in the hope of finding asteroids cloaked by excessive sunlight, an international team of astronomers co-opted a camera primarily designed to investigate the universe’s notoriously elusive dark energy.

In an announcement on Monday based on a survey first published in September in The Astronomical Journal, the researchers announced the discovery of three new light-drowned projectiles.

One of them, 2022 AP7, is roughly 1.6km long, and its orbit crosses Earth’s path around the Sun, getting as near as 7 million km to Earth itself – uncomfortably close by cosmic standards (although far more distant than Earth’s Moon). That makes 2022 AP7 “the largest potentially hazardous asteroid found in the last eight years or so”, said Dr Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, and an author of the study.

After the asteroid was discovered in January, additional observatories studied its motion and other astronomers retrospectively identified it in older images. This data set made it clear that it will not be paying Earth a visit during the next century, and perhaps far longer.

“There is an extremely low probability of an impact in the foreseeable future,” said Dr Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, who was not involved in the study.

But the gravitational pull of objects around the solar system – including our own planet – ensures that Earth-crossing asteroids do not dance the same way forever. The asteroid 2022 AP7 is no exception.

“Over time, this asteroid will get brighter and brighter in the sky as it starts crossing Earth’s orbit closer and closer to where the Earth actually is,” said Dr Sheppard.

It is possible that “way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants”, said Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast, who was not involved in the study.

And if, in the unluckiest of timelines, 2022 AP7 ultimately impacts Earth?

“This is what we call a planet killer,” said Dr Sheppard. “If this one hits Earth, it would cause planetwide destruction. It would be very bad for life as we know it.”

But as we are safe for many generations, this asteroid’s orbit is not its most noteworthy feature.

“The interesting thing about 2022 AP7 is its relatively large size,” said Dr Cristina Thomas, a planetary astronomer at Northern Arizona University, who was not involved in the study. Its existence suggests that other elephantine asteroids, veiled by the Sun’s glare, remain disconcertingly undiscovered.

Today, astronomers looking for potentially hazardous asteroids – those that get at least as close as 7.4 million km to Earth and are too chunky to be incinerated without incident by our atmosphere – focus on finding rocks around 140m across. There are most likely tens of thousands of them, and fewer than half have been identified. They could wreak destruction on a country-size scale. Such threats have motivated the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and other space agencies to develop planetary defence missions like Dart, the spacecraft that successfully adjusted the orbit of a small, non-threatening asteroid in September.

Most asteroids that are 1km-long and larger – far less common, but capable of global devastation – have already been found. But “we know some are still out there to find”, Prof Fitzsimmons said. Several no doubt sneak about near Mercury and Venus.

But Dr Thomas said it is “incredibly difficult to discover objects interior to Earth’s orbit with our current discovery telescopes”.

During most hours of the day, the Sun blinds Earth’s telescopes and objects can be hunted only in the few minutes around twilight. To overcome this limitation, the astronomers who detected 2022 AP7 relied on the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4m Telescope in Chile.

Not only can it examine large swathes of the sky, but it is also sensitive enough to find faint objects engulfed by sunlight. So far, the camera has found two additional near-Earth objects: a planet-killer in size whose orbit never crosses Earth’s but takes it closer to the Sun than any other known asteroid, flambeing its surface at temperatures extreme enough to liquefy lead; and a smaller, country-killer size rock that poses no risk.

The twilight survey’s capabilities will eventually be eclipsed by Nasa’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission. Launching later this decade, this Earth-orbiting infrared observatory will stare into the Sun’s glare and find most of the hazardous asteroids that other surveys have missed.

“We want to do everything possible to not be surprised,” said Dr Thomas.

That is why these surveys exist: to find Earth-impacting asteroids many lifetimes in advance so that, through energetic prods or nuclear explosions, we can send these monsters back into the shadows. NYTIMES

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