'Threatening' Asteroid on Collision Path With Earth Just Lowered
It’s nice to know that someone actually gets paid to watch the night sky to make sure that at least we’ll be notified if an asteroid is about to hit Earth. Technology and near-Earth surveys have advanced enough that the possibility of an asteroid the size of a planet-killer appearing out of nowhere, as is so prevalent in modern media depictions, is highly unlikely. Even the smaller ones, which would only annihilate a city or part of a continent, received enough attention to know whether they posed a threat or not. And ahead of Asteroid Day 2022, which happens on June 30, the ESA is proud to announce that they can remove one of the most threatening asteroids from their list of potential impacts. The asteroid, known as 2021 QM1, was first detected at the Mount Lemmon observatory on August 28, 2021. It was only one of about a dozen near-Earth asteroids discovered that night and did not initially raise any alarm. But follow-up observations put it on a potentially near-miss path with Earth