Potential Earth Impact In 2019 Ruled Out

Asteroid 2002 NT7: Potential Earth Impact In 2019 Ruled Out
Don Yeomans
July 28, 2002

With the processing of a few more observations of asteroid 2002 NT7 through July 28, we can now rule out any Earth impact possibilities for February 1, 2019. While we cannot yet completely rule out an impact possibility on February 1, 2060, it seems very likely that this possibility will be soon ruled out as well as additional positional observations are processed. Because the SENTRY system tracks a multitude of test particles in an effort to map the uncertainties of the asteroid's future positions, some of these test particles can take slightly different dynamical paths. Hence there are currently two entries for 2060 in our IMPACT RISK table. The entry with the higher risk (larger Palermo Technical Scale) would be the value that would then take precedence.