Will an asteroid ever hit Earth? NASA scientist gives reassuring answer

There is no such thing as an alarmist headline about a large asteroid visiting Earth’s vicinity in space to pump blood. Add to that the popularity of space disaster movies like Armageddon, and you will see why mankind might have an obsession with space rocks. So what does a NASA scientist have to say about this?

NASA released a short video on Wednesday with scientist Kelly Fast, an asteroid expert working on planetary defense, answering the pressing question: “Will an asteroid ever strike Earth?”

Fast had a quick response: “Yes, asteroids have struck Earth throughout its history and it will happen again.” But don’t panic, it doesn’t happen very often, and we just get better and better at spotting and tracking potential threats.

Chunks of rock and dust from space are constantly hitting our atmosphere, giving us spectacular meteor showers that we can enjoy. Asteroids that affect the surface of the Earth are much rarer. “They occur on time scales from hundreds to thousands to millions of years,” Fast said.

In July, a team of researchers from the Southwest Research Institute calculated the type of asteroid that wiped out dinosaurs as hitting Earth once every 250 million years, on average. This deadly dinosaur explosion happened about 66 million years ago, so the average is pretty good for life on Earth right now.

This is not to say that scientists do not keep a close eye on certain rocks, such as Bennu asteroid. This spinning top of a rock has a 1 in 1750 chance to hit Earth in the future. There is nothing to lose sleep on. In reality, here is a handy guide on when to fear space rocks. Spoiler: not very often.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office highlighted on Twitter that there is no known threat of asteroid impact on Earth for the next century.

Asteroids are always a concern, which is why NASA and other space agencies are working on ways to deal with potentially threatening objects. NASA prepares to launch its Double asteroid redirect test (DART), a planetary defense mission that will crush a spaceship in a moon to see if it can change its course. If that works, the concept could be used to drive a dangerous asteroid away from our planet.

So an asteroid will come for us someday, but hopefully we get a lot of warnings and we can even do something about it.

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