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Planetary News: Asteroids and Comets (2002)

UPDATE: Asteroid 2002 NT7 Under Watch, Odds of Impact Decline Dramatically

by A. J. S. Rayl
29 July 2002

Just as asteroid experts predicted last week, the calculated probability of asteroid 2002 NT7 colliding with Earth on February 1, 2019 has been eliminated -- and the chances for impact at any time in the future are shrinking with every new observation.

After processing "a few more observations" of asteroid 2002 NT7 through Sunday, July 28, NASA has ruled out the possibilities for an Earth impact on February 1, 2019, the space agency's NEO team reported on its website. The asteroid is still, however, under watch because calculations indicated that there existed a number of potentialities for its projected path to intersect that of the planet. Although NASA has not completely ruled out an impact possibility on February 1, 2060, "it seems very likely that this possibility will be soon ruled out as well" once additional positional observations are processed.

"This is the usual course of events where a given observation reaches some maximum probability and then starts to go back down, down, down," says senior engineer, Steve Chesley, of NASA's NEO program office at JPL.

In the news now is the backlash from the number of confusing - and often alarmist -- media reports about the asteroid last week. While many astronomers cringed at the stories that were "grossly misleading," as Chesley diplomatically puts it, the question remains as to how many unsuspecting souls were frightened by the sensationalized or misleading stories.

"We never made an announcement per se," Chesley informs. Although the asteroid did move into Level 1 of the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, the probability of an impact with Earth had not been "large enough to warrant public concern" or a specific announcement for that matter.

Both NASA and European observer-analysts, however, regularly post data about near Earth objects on their respective websites and last week asteroid 2002 NT7 became the first to cross the threshold from being an event "with no likely consequences" to one "meriting careful monitoring." The Americans placed the rock's chances for impact at six in one million, with the Europeans upping the odds to 16 in a million. From those sites, Chesley surmises, British reporters picked up the story and ran with it.

When the story hit, it hit hard -- and furiously. Some newspapers, online news sites, and television news programs played the story in sensational ways, with many illustrating the story with a painting of an asteroid impacting Earth. Journalistically, the coverage once again tested the boundaries between drawing readers to the news and writing a balanced, unbiased account of the facts.

All that aside, reality doesn't appear to be getting ready to imitate art anytime soon. In other words, asteroid 2002 NT7 is not expected to make a deep impact or bring forth Armageddon in 2019 -- or probably ever.

The Planetary Society annually awards NEO Gene Shoemaker grants to amateur observers primarily to track objects near the planet, especially those that may pose a threat to Earth. The recipient of this year's will be announced on Tuesday, July 30.