(ORDO NEWS) — The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed that celestial body 2021 QM1 will not harm Earth on April 2nd, 2052, but will come “dangerously close”.
This was discovered by astronomers after they used the world‘s most sensitive telescope to detect a barely visible asteroid.
The threatening asteroid has been at the top of the list for months as concerns have been raised about its possible collision with Earth. But the European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed that they have removed “2021 QM1” from their list.
They used one of the most sensitive telescopes in the world to assess the risks, and later experts announced that it was no longer dangerous, meaning there would be no collision with our planet.
“These early observations gave us more information about the asteroid’s trajectory, which we then projected into the future,” said Richard Moissle, head of ESA’s Planetary Defense Division.
“We were able to see its future trajectories around the Sun, and in 2052 it may come very close to the Earth. The more we observed the asteroid, the greater this risk became.”
Astronomer Marco Micheli said they “had to wait” until 2021 QM1 was out of the sunlight. This gave the team a “short window” to detect the “dangerous asteroid”.
“Our small, faint, receding asteroid would have to be found against a backdrop of thousands of stars,” said astronomer Olivier Henault.
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