Space Agencies Tracking Asteroid With 'Small Chance' of Hitting Earth in 2046

Space Agencies Tracking, Asteroid With 'Small Chance' , of Hitting Earth in 2046.

CNN reports that a newly-discovered asteroid has a slight chance of impacting Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046.

According to NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the asteroid is about 160 feet in diameter, close to the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

.

Data projections by the European Space Agency suggest that the asteroid has a 1 in 625 chance of hitting Earth.

.

However, CNN reports that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Sentry system calculated that the odds of impact are slightly greater.

.

According to the Sentry system, which tracks potential celestial threats, the odds of collision are closer to 1 in 560.

.

The chance of collision is extremely unlikely with no cause for public attention or public concern, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, via CNN.

This object is not particularly concerning, Davide Farnocchia, navigation engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, via CNN.

However, officials at NASA have warned that those odds could be altered as more observations of the asteroid are made and further analysis has been carried out.

Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future, NASA Asteroid Watch, via Twitter.

The asteroid, first spotted on February 2, is traveling at approximately 15.5 miles per second and is currently over 11 million miles from Earth.