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Speaking to RT America, Leroy Chiao, former commander of the International Space Station, said that "of course" this "great disaster" could theoretically occur – and has already been in the past. However, reassuringly, the chances of this happening in the near future remain "quite low," said Chiao: "If you watch the films that have been filmed on this subject, you will find that there is a serious disaster.
"And of course, it could happen.
"And we know that about 60 million years ago, a very large asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula and probably wiped out the dinosaurs.
"And that sort of thing can happen and happens periodically.
"However, I think the chances of that happening are rather low."
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It is thought that the comet that killed the dinosaurs occurred 66 million years ago.
The giant space object measured between 6.8 and 50.3 kilometers in diameter and set off a massive extinction event that destroyed 75% of the plant and animal species on the planet, including all non-dinosaurs -aviaires.
NASA's asteroid trackers have also revealed that an asteroid with the destructive power of 2,700 megatonnes of explosive TNT could hit Earth later in the year.
The imposing asteroid, the asteroid FT3, will pass in front of our home planet on October 3, 2019.
NASA expects the flyby to mark the first of 165 approaches between 2019 and 2116.
On any of these asteroid overflights, the risk of cataclysm is low, but if the asteroid deviated from its trajectory and headed straight for Earth, the results could be cataclysmic. The FT3 asteroid is a monstrous rocky object measuring an estimated diameter of 1,115 feet (340 m).
NASA further estimates that the asteroid weighs an incredible 55,000,000,000 kg.
If the asteroid were to hit the Earth, at the point of atmospheric input, the rock would rush to the planet at 20.37 km per second, or over 45,500 mph.
The impact force is likely to be 2,700 megatonnes of TNT or 2,700,000,000 tonnes of TNT.
In comparison, the nuclear bomb launched on the Japanese Hiroshima in 1945, towards the end of the Second World War, ranged from 13 kilotons to 18 kilotons – from 13,000 to 18,000 tons of TNT.
The first day this could happen falls on October 3rd of this year.
After that, NASA estimates that the asteroid will strike us on October 2, 2024, and October 3, 2025.
The FT3 asteroid is a kind of Apollo-type space rock, which means that it follows a similar orbit to the 1862 Apollo asteroid.
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The trajectory also means that she surrounds the Sun within the confines of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
NASA spotted the rock for the first time on March 20, 2007 and has since confirmed the FT3 orbit on 14 observations in total.
The US Space Agency said: "In the unlikely event that a particular event of potential impact persists until the orbit is relatively well constrained, the likelihood of impact and the associated risk tends to increase as observations are added.
"This is not too paradoxical: if an asteroid has to get very close to the Earth, a collision can not be ruled out early.
"The likelihood of impact will tend to increase as the orbit refines and alternative and safer trajectories are eliminated.
"Eventually, the probability of impact will fall – usually very sharply – to zero or, if the asteroid is actually on a collision course, it will continue to grow to 100%.
There is a small chance – about one in 11,000,000 – the FT3 asteroid will crush us in the next three months.
The impact probabilities result in a chance of a cataclysm of 0.0000092% or a chance of 99.9999908% that the asteroid misses the Earth.
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