There are an estimated 1.1 to 1.9 million asteroids in the Solar System’s asteroid belt, a vast stretch of space rocks that sit between Mars and Jupiter.
While many of them will for their lives pose little threat, sometimes, their orbits can be changed by Jupiter’s massive gravity and occasional encounters with Mars’ gravitational pull.
These events can throw the asteroids from the main belt and send them hurtling out into space in all directions, and occasionally, that direction is Earth.
Scientists around the world study such asteroids, including those at the Canary Islands Astrophysics Institute (IAC), and recently identified an object known as 2023 FY3.
A member of a cluster of asteroids, according to the data, 2023 FY3 is on a collision course for Earth and could, the scientists say, strike the planet in the next 100 years.
Discovered in April 2023, researchers from IAC and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) recently published their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
They found that while the asteroid’s size doesn’t pose a major threat, its trajectory is similar to other asteroids travelling towards Earth.
The study, part of a long-term project led by IAC researcher DR Julia de León, hopes to discover more near-Earth objects in danger of colliding with the planet.
“We are particularly interested in asteroids between 100 metres and 1 kilometre in size, which are the ones that could cause regional damage in the hypothetical event of an impact,” Dr de León said in a statement.
“Now that we know what the composition of its surface is like, we have a fairly accurate idea of its size, we know that it rotates rapidly and this means that we can classify it as a possible fragment of a larger asteroid, and we also know that it has been subjected to an orbital resonance with our planet,” explained Dr Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, a researcher at the UCM.
The asteroid measures five metres, and though this is relatively small for an asteroid, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is heading towards Earth at considerable speed.
Because of their distance from the Sun, the average velocity of asteroids hit out of the asteroid belt is between 17 and 25km/s — a staggering 38,029 to 55,925mph.
2023 FY3 was spotted during observations made on La Palma with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), a powerful telescope with a large aperture capable of studying the smallest space rocks.
Scientists studied the curvature of the asteroid from the Teide Observatory using the recently inaugurated Two Meter Twin Telescope (TTT).
It took them two months to analyse their findings before the data were released to the public.
Dr De La Fuente Marcos noted: “With these results, we have to draw the attention of the international scientific community to objects of intrinsic interest in the areas of planetary defence and the scientific and commercial exploitation of asteroids that are easily accessible from our planet.”
2023 FY3 isn’t the only asteroid on Earth’s radar, and many are predicted to come within close proximity of the planet well before 100 years.
Back in 2007, scientists spotted 2007 FT3 floating through space but soon lost its flight path and haven’t spotted it since. It is now what is known as a “lost asteroid”.
According to NASA, it has a 0.0000096 percent — or 1 in 10 million — chance of striking our planet on March 3, 2030.
A second estimate suggests it has the probability of 0.0000087 percent, or 1 in 11.5 million chance of striking the Earth on October 5, 2024.
Should either strike occur, 2007 FT3 has the potential to release the energy equivalent to the detonation of 2.6 billion tons of TNT.
