The European Space Agency (ESA) has just confirmed that a near-Earth asteroid, which initially posed a threat to our planet, is no longer a risk.
Baptized as “2021 QM1” –with a estimated diameter between 35 and 80 meters–, the asteroid was initially discovered on 28 August 2021 by Mount Lemmon Observatory, located north of Tucson, Arizona.
Routine follow-up observations from telescopes around the world began to indicate a risk of a dangerous approach to Earth in 2052, so it was included in the “risk list”.
However, follow-up observations and analysis of the faintest asteroid ever observed have confirmed that there is no chance of it impacting on that date, and therefore it has been removed from the dreaded list.
“With Asteroid Day Live 2022 fixed for the 30 of June, we can affirm without fear of being wrong that the most dangerous asteroid known to humanity in the last year will not impact, at least for the next century”, assured the ESA.
Dangerous asteroid: difficult to detect
“We could see its future paths around the Sun, and in 2052 could come dangerously close to Earth. The more the asteroid was observed, the greater the risk”, explains Richard Moissl, head of Planetary Defense at ESA.
Just when the risk seemed to increase, a cosmic alignment occurred: the asteroid’s trajectory brought it closer to the Sun as seen from Earth, and for months it became impossible to see due to the bright glare of our star.
“But to top it off, we knew that 2021 QM1 was also moving away from Earth in its current orbit, which means that by the time it disappeared from the Sun’s glare, it might be too faint to detect,” explains Marco Micheli, an astronomer at NEOCC (Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre).
According to the statement, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) was primed and ready to resume monitoring. As soon as the 30 meter asteroid moved away from the sunlight, and weather conditions permitting, ESO’s VLT would focus its 8m mirror on the disappearing rock.
“We had a short window to detect our dangerous asteroid,” explained Olivier Hainaut, ESO astronomer . “To make matters worse, it was passing through a region of the sky with the Milky Way just behind it. Our small, dim, receding asteroid would have to be set against a background of thousands of stars. These would turn out to be some of the most complicated asteroid observations we have ever done.”
During the night of 24 in May, the ESO VLT took a series of new images. The data arrived and Olivier and Marco began to process it, stacking subsequent observations on top of each other and removing background stars.
Asteroid 550 QM1, removed from the risk list
Finally, the work bore fruit and a positive detection of the faintest asteroid ever observed was achieved. With a magnitude of in the scale used by astronomers to describe the brightness of objects in the sky, 2021 QM1 was 250 millions of times fainter than the faintest visible stars to the naked eye from a dark point.
With these new observations, the asteroid’s trajectory was refined, ruling out an impact on 2052, and 2021 QM1 was removed from the ESA risk list, which includes 1,377 objects.
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