At the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, astronomers found asteroid 2022 AP7 along with two other asteroids, hidden in the bright light from the Sun.
This asteroid considered a `planet killer` is up to 1.5km wide and was named 2022 AP7 by scientists.
At the present time, 2022 AP7 is crossing Earth’s orbit at a quite distance.
Astronomer Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution for Science shared: “So far, we have found two large near-Earth asteroids, they are about 1km across, all asteroids are above this size.
To find these asteroids, astronomers used the Dark Energy Camera located on the Víctor M. Blanco telescope.
“Only about 25 asteroids whose orbits lie entirely within Earth’s orbit have been discovered to date,” Sheppard said.
Perhaps we have only discovered a few asteroids, there is a high possibility that there are other planet killers that have not yet been found located inside the orbits of Earth and Venus.`
NASA has been tracking the orbits of about 28,000 asteroids using the Terrestrial Impact Terminal Alert System (ATLAS), which includes an array of four telescopes that can scan the entire sky every day.
Since ATLAS was adopted, it has discovered more than 700 near-Earth asteroids and 66 comets.
Based on its research and orbit estimates, NASA asserts that Earth will not encounter any danger related to planetary collisions within the next 100 years.
But this does not mean that we should stop inspection work, because danger can still occur at any time without our expectation.
An even more serious incident was the 2013 meteorite explosion in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Space agencies around the world have been researching possible measures to deflect asteroids that threaten to hit Earth.
China said it is also in the early planning stages of an asteroid redirection mission.
