{"id":26712,"date":"2026-02-06T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/?p=26712"},"modified":"2026-02-12T11:31:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:31:25","slug":"five-possible-dates-on-nasas-radar-and-the-most-important-thing-is-what-they-do-not-mean-why-the-list-is-not-a-countdown-to-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/five-possible-dates-on-nasas-radar-and-the-most-important-thing-is-what-they-do-not-mean-why-the-list-is-not-a-countdown-to-the-end-of-the-world\/26712\/","title":{"rendered":"Five \u201cpossible\u201d dates on NASA\u2019s radar, and the most important thing is what they do NOT mean: why the list is not a countdown to the end of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

People love to joke about \u201cthe next doomsday date,\u201d especially when a space rock <\/a>shows up in the news. But the real story is quieter, and a lot more useful, because NASA keeps a public list of asteroids<\/a> with any non-zero chance of hitting Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, that watchlist includes five large near-Earth asteroids<\/a> with \u201cvirtual impact\u201d dates stretching from October 3, 2030 to March 16, 2880. The odds are tiny, but the dates show how scientists measure risk and why those numbers can shift as new observations roll in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How NASA turns telescope data into risk estimates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Near-Earth asteroids are space rocks whose orbits bring them into Earth\u2019s neighborhood<\/a>. NASA\u2019s Sentry system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u2019s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies continuously checks updated asteroid orbits for future close passes that could, in a worst-case scenario, become impacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: Astronomers confirm for the first time the existence of a giant volcanic cave on Venus<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cvirtual impactor\u201d is basically a what-if path inside the margin of error, not a prediction that a strike is coming. Sentry also notes that it\u2019s normal for objects to drop off the list when better measurements remove the impact scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The five biggest names on the current watchlist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the top is asteroid 29075 (1950 DA), estimated at about 1.3 kilometers wide, with a possible impact date of March 16, 2880 and odds around one in 2,650. Bennu<\/a>, about half a kilometer across, has its highest single-date risk on September 24, 2182 at roughly one in 2,700, and NASA<\/a> puts its total chance of an impact by 2300 at about one in 1,750.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next comes 1979 XB, a roughly 0.66-kilometer asteroid last observed in 1979, with its largest listed impact date on December 14, 2113 and odds in the ballpark of one in 1.8 million. Another long-lost object, 2007 FT3, hasn\u2019t been seen since 2007 and carries a possible impact date of October 3, 2030 with odds around one in 10 million, which is one reason astronomers would love to recover it with new telescope time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: More than $130 million arrived from China, and a project in Patagonia that had been stalled for more than two years is back on track with a twist that no one expected<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rounding out the five is 2015 JJ, an asteroid about 130 meters wide with a possible impact date of November 7, 2111 and odds around one in 14,800. If an object that size hit, the damage would depend heavily on where it came down, but it could still devastate a region in minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a Bennu-class impact could do to the climate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So what happens if a medium-sized asteroid actually hits? A Science Advances<\/em> modeling study led by Lan Dai, working with Axel Timmermann at the IBS Center for Climate Physics<\/a> at Pusan National University, simulated a Bennu-type impact that lofts hundreds of millions of tons of dust high into the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their scenarios, sunlight drops, global temperatures fall by about 7 degrees Fahrenheit, and rainfall declines by around 15% for a period measured in years. The models also show a sharp hit to photosynthesis, meaning plant growth and ocean productivity could dip hard at first, and that\u2019s where everyday life gets real fast, with crop yields and food prices under pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why the scary headlines rarely stay true<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Asteroid risk is not a countdown clock, and most objects that look threatening early on end up being cleared after more observations. NASA<\/a> says Earth is safe from asteroid Apophis for at least 100 years after additional tracking removed its last small impact possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, planetary defense<\/a> has moved from theory to practice. NASA confirmed<\/a> in 2022 that the DART mission changed an asteroid\u2019s motion in space, showing that a carefully aimed spacecraft can nudge a target over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More: It’s official: NASA put forward a \u201cfar-fetched\u201d hypothesis in 2004 about an icy moon, and confirmation has finally arrived that fits all the pieces together<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The main official monitoring data have been published by NASA\u2019s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies in the Sentry system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main scientific study on Bennu-type asteroid collisions was published in Science Advances<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People love to joke about \u201cthe next doomsday date,\u201d especially when a space rock shows up in the news. But … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":26713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26743,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26712\/revisions\/26743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoticias.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}