Asteroid Bennu can collide with the Earth and destroy all life on our planet in the very near future, at least, astronomer-planetary scientist from the SETI Institute Michael Bush is sure of this.
This space object is of great importance to NASA, since the Osiris Rex spacecraft, directed towards the asteroid by the space agency, is already in its orbit. The mission of the probe is to collect samples of the asteroid and return them to Earth by 2023.
However, NASA is studying the asteroid so closely, not only for scientific purposes. There is a small but chance that the asteroid will collide with the Earth. According to Macle Bush, the greatest likelihood of a collision exists between 2175 and 2200 years, but whether this happens or not depends on the so-called Yarkovsky effect.
The Yarkovsky effect is when an asteroid or celestial body changes its orbit under the influence of heatstroke from the Sun or other celestial bodies, or due to the release of gases.
If the change in Bennu's orbit is strong enough, its trajectory can be redirected to Earth. According to the astronomer, the probability that this could happen is 1 in 27,000, but he believes that high-precision measurements of Osiris Rex will eliminate this possibility.
For now, however, NASA is focused on returning samples from asteroid Bennu, where OSIRIS-Rex arrived in December 2018 after a grueling journey of over a billion miles. The ship has now fully mapped the asteroid and selected four potential locations from which to collect samples.
The next step is to cut these areas down to two. The difficulties arose due to the fact that NASA was not prepared for how rocky the surface of the asteroid Bennu would be.
