NASA is considering that the asteroid Bennu could pose a threat to Earth, so it constantly monitors it. What makes this asteroid potentially dangerous is the fact that it regularly approaches 300,000 kilometers from our planet.
Calculations carried out by the scientists indicate that the asteroid Bennu is in danger of hitting the Earth between the years 2175 and 2199. The chances are slim, at a probability of 1/2700, but the consequences of a possible collision would be completely disastrous.
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The impact of the asteroid Bennu with our planet would generate a kinetic energy of 1,200 megatons, 80,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. This catastrophe is incalculable and almost impossible to happen, unless we are talking about famous science fiction movies.
China has decided to position itself to intervene in the route of this rock of the galaxies, so it plans to send rockets of 992 tons each, used to make deliveries to the Chinese space station. The country needs to launch ‘only’ 23 of these devices simultaneously to deflect the asteroid Bennu.
In November of this year, two related NASA and ESA missions, Dae and Hera, will also deploy super rockets to analyze the effects of this impact. On the other hand, China has yet to set any date. The asteroid Bennu was discovered in 1999, with significant amounts of carbon and molecules dating back to the planet’s earliest times.
In 2016, the launch of the Osiris-Rex space probe, which reached its goal in 2018, managed to recover a soil sample for analysis and will return to Earth in 2023. The asteroid was named after the mythological bird ‘Benu’, related to the Sun, rebirth and creation.
Currently, part of the Sentry Risk Table, the space rock has an average diameter of 490 meters and a more or less spheroidal shape, resembling a top. Bennu is an active asteroid and sporadically emits jets of particles and stones up to 10 centimeters (not dust, defined in tens of micrometers).
Bennu’s body may be the same as the asteroid Ryugu, but only an analysis of the composition of these bodies can confirm that they are ‘brothers’. The chemical nature and basic mineralogy of this asteroid would have been established within the first 10 million years of the Solar System, isn’t that amazing?
Now we can only hope that it passes far away from Earth, as we will no longer be here in 2175, but our future generations will be!
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