Giant Asteroid capable of destroying our planet to come near earth by 2029

May 6: The proceedings on the second day of a conference on cosmic threats to our planet was interrupted by Paul Chodas for an important message. Paul is the manager of NASA’s Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies. According to the new calculations there are 10 per cent chances that an asteroid named 2019 PDC would strike Earth. This can happen anytime in next eight years and can tether enough energy to level a whole city.

Scientists would need more than a year of observations before they could say exactly where the asteroid was headed. But it takes several years to build and launch a mission in response, and any deflection effort would have to happen before 2025 to be effective. Indeed, analyses of more than 20,000 known near-Earth objects suggest the chance of any hitting us in the next century is less than 1 in 10,000.

In reality, the discovery of any rock with a 10 percent chance of hitting Earth would trigger an automatic response from United Nations’ Space Mission Planning Advisory Group — an international coalition of space agencies whose sole job is to coordinate the world’s response to impending asteroid disasters.

Humans need only change the asteroid’s velocity by a few centimeters per second; over the course of several orbits around the sun, that change adds up to push the rock fully in front of or behind the Earth. But the proposed methods for deflection are expensive and untested. Alternatively, scientists could detonate a nuclear bomb beside the asteroid, vaporizing part of its surface and causing the rock to recoil. This method is equally effective at increasing or decreasing an asteroid’s speed.

Both options raised red flags among the Planetary Defense Conference attendees. Ultimately, the group decided to keep every option on the table. They would immediately launch a reconnaissance mission to fly past the rock and get a better understanding of its trajectory. A scientific spacecraft already in flight would be rerouted to 2019 PDC. Meanwhile, several space agencies would begin work on a fleet of kinetic impactors and an additional spacecraft capable of carrying a nuclear device.