Previously ‘lost’ asteroid could hit Earth in 2024

An asteroid first spotted in 2007 which quickly got lost — astronomers have no idea where it is — could hit Earth as soon as this year, according to MSN.

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The odds are pretty long. Asteroid 2007 FT3 will have about an 11 million to 1 chance of hitting us on Oct. 5, 2024 — not high enough to make you cancel your Halloween party. There’s a slightly higher probability of 1 in 10 million in 2030, MSN reported, quoting NASA.

Those are tremendous chances that we’ll emerge unscathed. But remember, the odds of winning a billion-dollar lottery are 1 in 300 million, and that does happen from time to time.

Asteroid 2007 FT3 is big enough to unleash the force of 2.6 billion tons of TNT — not enough to send us the way of the dinosaurs but bad enough to really mess up a continent, according to MSN.

NASA said that this particular asteroid could hit the Earth sometime between 2024 and 2116, MSN said.

NASA has a whole department that tracks asteroids called the Center for Near Earth Object Studies. They estimate there are about 32,000 known near-Earth-asteroids (NEAs) and more than 120 short-period, near-Earth comets. The majority aren’t predicted to come anywhere near Earth for hundreds of years.

There is an object with the mundane name of 29075 (1950 DA) that is the second riskiest rock of hitting us, NASA said. It’s big enough to really do some damage — 0.81 miles, or 1.3 milometers, long and weighing 78 million tons. That would release an equivalent of 75 billion tons of TNT, and that would be curtains on humanity and maybe all life on Earth, MSN said.

NASA has plenty of time to think of what to do about that — 29075 (1950 DA) has a 1 in 34,000 chance of hitting Earth on March 16, 2880, which in astronomical terms is about like getting your hair parted by a .30-06.