Newly-discovered asteroid poses threat to Earth in 2046

NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office has issued a warning about a newly discovered asteroid named 2023 DW, which could potentially impact Earth in 2046. While the chances of a collision are currently deemed to be very small, the agency's planetary defence experts are closely monitoring the asteroid's path and will update the predictions as they gather more data about it.

"Orbit analysts will continue to monitor asteroid 2023 DW and update predictions as more data comes in," the agency's Planetary Defense Coordination Office tweeted earlier this week.

We've been tracking a new asteroid named 2023 DW that has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2046. Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/SaLC0AUSdP

— NASA Asteroid Watch (@AsteroidWatch) March 7, 2023

NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) computes orbits for newly-discovered asteroids and performs long-term analyses of possible future positions of hazardous asteroids relative to Earth to determine and warn of any impact hazard.

It is worth mentioning that NASA and other international space agencies are taking the threat of near-Earth asteroids seriously and are actively developing and testing technologies to protect our home planet from potential impacts. For instance, in September 2022, NASA conducted the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a planetary defense mission designed to test the ability of spacecraft to deflect an asteroid's trajectory. The DART spacecraft slammed into asteroid Dimorphos, altering the orbit of the asteroid moonlet by 33 minutes.

The success of the DART mission is a significant step forward in the agency's ability to prevent future asteroid strikes on Earth. 

The European Space Agency's Hera mission is another planetary defence mission under development. Planned for the 2024 launch, the mission will measure in great detail the outcome of the DART mission kinetic impactor test.

The primary goal of ESA's Hera mission is to characterize the asteroid's internal properties and measure the size and shape of the impact crater created by the DART spacecraft.