2013 TV135, a recently discovered asteroid, will not likely hit the Earth in 2032, NASA said after rumors and reports popped up on the Internet.
The asteroid, which was discovered by Ukrainian researchers, has a 99.998 percent chance of missing in the Earth in 19 years, the U.S. space agency said, adding that the probability of it hitting our planet is 1 in 63,000.
The asteroid is around 410 meters wide and if it hit the Earth, it would release as much energy as dozens of nuclear bombs.
“On the night of October 12, I was watching the Giraffe constellation, it was an in-depth monitoring as part of the comet search program,” Gennady Borisov of Crimean Astrophysical Observatory told the Itar-Tass news agency, according to RT.com.
“This is when the asteroid… was discovered. The first observations show that it moves quickly and is relatively close.”
The asteroid was placed on the List of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.
“This is a relatively new discovery,” Don Yeomans, head of NASA’s NEO Program, told CNN. “With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the foreseeable future.”
According to RT, the asteroid was given a one out of 10 on the Torino Scale that is used to determine the danger of an asteroid impact. It “poses no unusual level of danger” and the threat of hitting the Earth is “unlikely,” it says.
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