The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has moved to calm any emergent fears of a possible asteroid collision following the appearance of a German newspaper story claiming NASA’s impact predictions for the Apophis (99942) asteroid to be significantly wide of the mark.
German kid\'s calculation of Apophis asteroid hitting the Earth not accurate says NASA. Credit: Http2007/Flickr.
Specifically, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten ran a news story on Tuesday relaying how a fastidious young German schoolboy had discovered a worrying miscalculation in NASA’s prediction figures regarding the possibility of an Earth-strike by the asteroid Apophis.
According to findings made by 13-year-old student Nico Marquardt during a project for a regional science competition, NASA has vastly underestimated the probability of a chance collision with the 270m chunk of space debris.
He offered that NASA’s strike prediction of 1in 45,000 is significantly too high, with the actual probability more likely to be somewhere around 1 in every 450.
And, to pour further fuel on the fires of panic, the German publication also claimed NASA had conceded to the European Space Agency (ESA) that young Mr. Marquardt’s calculations were indeed correct.
Quick to reinforce its position following the Internet distribution of the story, which was bound to whip up a degree of fear mongering based on NASA’s apparent admission, the agency stepped forward on Wednesday to insist that the boy’s project results are wrong and that its expert figures in relation to Apophis are absolutely correct.
Speaking with the AFP news agency, NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown commented that NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office “has not changed its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036.”
Mr. Brown also went on to label the German newspaper story as inaccurate in relation to NASA admitting its supposed calculation error, while also noting that at no time did the agency have contact with Nico Marquardt regarding the Apophis asteroid.
The boy’s science project took into account the possibility that Apophis could strike one or more of the approximately 40,000 artificial satellites currently orbiting the Earth when it passes in 2029, which would then lead to a shift in the asteroid’s orbit, duly increasing the probability of a planetary collision when it passes once again in 2036.
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