Written by Reananda Hidayat Permono Completed Master of Science - MS, Petroleum Geology from Curtin University, Perth, Australia.

NASA: 2023 DW Asteroid Could Collide with Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046

The European Space Agency has added the 2023 DW asteroid to the agency’s Risk List as it could collide with Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046.

The asteroid, first discovered on Feb. 26 this year, has a Torino Scale ranking of 1.

According to the scale, it’s predicted to pose “no unusual level of danger.”

Scientists believe the asteroid has a 50-meter diameter, or about the length of an international swimming pool.

Based on current calculations, the chance of collision is extremely unlikely, so no cause for public concern.

The European Space Agency estimates it has a 1 in 607 chance of hitting Earth.

Furthermore, the soonest it would potentially harm Earth isn’t for more than two decades, Valentine’s Day 2046.

According to the Risk List, it could also impact Valentine’s Day from 2047 to 2051.

Meanwhile, other 1,448 asteroids on the Risk List own a scale ranking of zero.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Office explains it has been monitoring the 2023 DW asteroid, and its risk of impacting Earth is “very small.”

The office tweeted that NASA needs several weeks of data to predict new objects’ orbits accurately.

Astronomer Piero Sicoli said there is about a “1 in 400 chance” that the asteroid will impact Earth.

Interestingly, if the asteroid was to collide with Earth,

he predicted it would fall anywhere around the Indian Ocean to the United States East Coast.

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