A massive asteroid made an unsettlingly close approach toward Earth this month and although it sailed by and left our planet unscathed, there's a small chance of a collision the next time it approaches, approximately 19 years from now.
According to a report from NASA the asteroid is about 1,300 feet in size and its orbit carried it to within 4.2 million miles of the Earth recently. It was first discovered in the Camelopardalis (Giraffe) constellation by astronomers at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in the Ukraine, who dubbed it TV135.
"I was watching the Giraffe constellation, it was an in-depth monitoring as part of the comet search program," Gennady Borisov, who works at the Observatory, told the Itar-Tass news agency. "This was when the asteroid...was discovered. The first observations show that it moves quickly and is relatively close."
RT.com reports that the discovery of TV135 has been confirmed by astronomers in Italy, Spain, the UK and Russia. Since its discovery the asteroid was added to the list of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. This list includes asteroids with orbits closer to the Earth than 4.6 million miles.
According to the astronomers who discovered it, TV135 has a slim chance of crashing into the Earth when it orbits back in our direction in 2032. If it were to hit the Earth it would reportedly cause an explosion equal to 2,500 megatons of TNT. This is 50 times greater the strength of the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated.
However, experts at NASA insist that there's no need to panic and have issued a "reality check" in regard to potential danger.
According to NASA's "reality check," the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth is one in 63,000. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office says that TV135 should be easily observable in the coming months.
They say that as additional observations are made and studied the initial orbit calculations will be improved and it's most likely that the result will be a marked reduction or total elimination of any risk of Earth impact.
"To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in 2032 at about 99.998 percent," said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Program Office. "This is a relatively new discovery. With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the foreseeable future."