Asteroid capable of having a 'devastating impact on life' on Earth discovered

A large asteroid whose orbit crosses that of Earth has been discovered by astronomers. The crossing of the orbits opens a tiny window for a catastrophic collision far in the future. The 1.5 kilometer- (0.9 mile-) wide asteroid has been named 2022 AP7. The discovery was made in an area that beats visibility due to the glare from the Sun. The findings were published in the scientific journal The Astronomical Journal.

The Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile, that was originally developed to study dark matter, found the asteroid along with two other near-Earth asteroids.

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"2022 AP7 crosses Earth’s orbit, which makes it a potentially hazardous asteroid, but it currently does not now or anytime in the future have a trajectory that will have it collide with the Earth," said lead author of the findings, astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

"It is the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years," said NOIRLab, a US-funded research group that operates multiple observatories.

2022 AP7 takes five years to circle the Sun under its current orbit, which at its closest point to Earth remains several million kilometers away. This is why the risk is small, but if a collision happens, an asteroid of that size "would have a devastating impact on life as we know it," said Sheppard.

The dust launched into the air would have a major cooling effect, provoking an "extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years", he added.

Astronomers have discovered at least 30,000 asteroids near the Earth, and have named them "Near Earth Objects" (NEOs). None of them threaten Earth for the next 100 years. Sheppard says there are "likely 20 to 50 large NEOs left to find," and most of them are on orbits that put them in the Sun's glare.

In September, NASA had collided a spacecraft with an asteroid in a bid to change its trajectory. The test mission was a preparation for any such situation where anasteroid might threaten the Earth.

(With inputs from agencies)