An asteroid measuring 50 meters in diameter has a slim chance of hitting Earth in 2098, according to a recent finding by the international consortium Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS).
Chen Wen-ping, project director of Taiwan’s team in the multinational group and professor of National Central University’s Graduate Institute of Astronomy, said Sept. 27 the object is likely to come very close to the Earth’s surface in 2098 without actually hitting it.
The object, designated 2010 ST3, was discovered Sept. 16 by Pan-STARRS’s first telescope PS1 located in Hawaii. It is the first asteroid the PS1 team has found and labeled as “potential hazardous object” since the telescope began full-time observations mid-May of this year.
“The asteroid is likely to burn up and break up into pieces if it slams into the Earth’s atmosphere,” he said. “But even if it does not hit our planet, its explosive shock waves can destroy an area of hundreds of square kilometers in size.”
Given years of warning in advance, Chen said it should be possible to organize a space mission to cause the asteroid to deviate from its projected path before it comes too close to Earth.
The Pan-STARRS team estimated that 2010 ST3, currently 32 million kilometers away, would come within 6.4 million kilometers of Earth this October. This close encounter poses no immediate threat to the planet, according to the Pan-STARRS researchers, who noted that Earth and the asteroid both orbit around the sun.
The Pan-STARRS’ PS1 mission, led by the U.S. and partly funded by Taiwan’s National Science Council, comprises researchers from Germany, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. Roughly 30 Taiwanese researchers from various universities and Academia Sinica are taking part in the project.
The mission is dedicated to detecting moving asteroids in the solar system and preventing them from causing possible disastrous collisions in the future. (HZW)
Write to Audrey Wang at audrey@mail.gio.gov.tw