NASA’s InSight probe just touched down on Mars, the latest in a line of impressive achievements from NASA. The space agency has also been busy with asteroid monitoring, implementing the JPL Sentry system to scan the depths of space. One object hurtling through the cosmos is worth noting, and it could be a threat in just five years.
NASA has identified a monster space rock which could strike with the force of the world’s most dangerous nuclear bomb.
NASA has found an asteroid named 2018 LF16 which stands a chance of leaving Earth in flames, but odds are astronomically low.
LF16 is essentially guaranteed to miss, with chances essentially zero of any kind of brush with Earth’s surface.
NASA calculations are 99.9999967 percent for a miss, which translates to a one in 30 million chance of the world being hit.
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Although the asteroid likely won’t hit us, the size and speed of the object makes it an alarming presence.
Asteroid LF16 is huge, coming in at 200 metres wide and four times the height of Trafalgar Square’s Nelson’s Column.
Currently, the space rock is barrelling with extreme speeds of 33,844 mph, the combined speed and size able to cause devastation on impact.
In the scenario of LF16 hitting the planet, the result would be as powerful as the devastating Tsar Bomba.
Detonated in 1950, the Russian hydrogen bomb had the equivalent power of 50 megatons of TNT, and LF16 wouldn’t have much trouble rivalling this.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has expanded on the chances of an asteroid hitting Earth, and how destructive an asteroid like LF16 could be.
The ESA said: “Some asteroids are very large, and would cause enormous destruction if any were to strike Earth, but their estimated population in our Solar System is rather small and more than 90 percent of these are thought to have been discovered. None of these pose any risk of impact.
“Some are very small − below 10m diameter − and only a tiny fraction of the estimated population of these have been discovered, but any impact would be harmless.
“The main challenge stems from the population of middle-size objects, ranging from tens to hundreds of metres in diameter.”
Asteroid 2018 LF16 could also make landing in the years following 2023, as 62 dates in total mark when the rock could enter the atmosphere.
The earliest date is August 8 2023, and the next two closest are August 3, 2024, and August 1, 2025.
None of these dates are likely to yield an impact of any kind.
On NASA’s Torino Impact Hazard Scale, which is used to measure the danger posed by an asteroid, the value is zero out of a possible 10.