Don Yeomans
NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Manager
As expected, asteroid 2000 BF19 has been declared safe.
Italian scientist, Andrea Milani announced that, when additional
observations from Jim Scotti (Spacewatch, Tucson, AZ) and Rob
McNaught (Australia) were processed into the orbital solutions, the
remote chance of an Earth collision in 2022 disappeared completely. It
now appears that this object will approach the Earth no closer than
0.038 AU = 3.5 million miles in the next 50 years. It is worth noting
that as more and more near-Earth objects are discovered, there
will be an increasing number of objects whose initial orbits allow the
remote possibility of an Earth impact at some future date. However,
as additional observations of these newly discovered objects become
available for processing into the orbit determination process, the vast
majority of these potential Earth impact possibilities will disappear.
