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Several new reports claim “lost” Asteroid 2007 FT3 could hit Earth in 2024 with the force of 2.6 billion tons of TNT, causing astronomical damage.
According to one of those reports, published by GB News on MSN, Asteroid 2007 FT3 was first spotted by astronomers in, you guessed it, 2007. Shortly thereafter, NASA lost sight of it.
GB News also reported that now Asteroid 2007 FT3 will have about a 11 million to 1 chance of hitting Earth on Oct. 5, 2024.
While that story was just published a few days ago, reports about the possibility of Asteroid 2007 FT3 striking Earth in 2024 actually began circulating several weeks back.
In fact, NASA had already responded to these concerns before the story began going viral again last week.
“There are no known asteroid impact threats to Earth at any time in the next century,” a NASA spokesperson told the Standard in late November. “NASA and its partners diligently watch the skies to find, track, and categorize asteroids and near-Earth objects (NEOs), including those that may come close to Earth.
“An important note here is planetary scientists define asteroid approaches that come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit as close approaches. The larger an asteroid is, the easier it is for our planetary defense experts to find, meaning that their orbits around the sun are usually very well-known and understood for years or even decades.”
Why this is suddenly making the rounds again on social media probably has more to do with the calendar changing over to the year 2024 than it does with being an actual threat to humanity.
Then again, as WPXI News pointed out last week, “The odds of winning a billion-dollar lottery are 1 in 300 million and that does happen from time to time.”
Interestingly, there were also concerns on the internet about Asteroid 2007 FT3 hitting Earth in October of 2019 as well. Nothing happened then either.
So we’re all good, right?
Probably, but then again, Asteroid 2007 FT3 is still classified as being “lost.”
Plus, there was another asteroid that hit Earth in 2022, only two hours after astronomers noticed it.
And in 2021, an asteroid almost smashed into Earth and no one saw it coming, not even NASA, so you just never know.