--- title: The Bennu Asteroid Could Hit Earth, But Don't Worry description: On the off-chance you're alive in 150 years, you could be in for a very bad day, when the asteroid Bennu collides with Earth canonical: https://time.com/4433293/bennu-asteroid-collision-earth/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-01T19:26:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-06T09:45:03.653Z article:section: Science og:title: No, You Don't Have to Worry About Getting Clobbered by an Asteroid og:description: At least not much og:url: https://time.com/4433293/bennu-asteroid-collision-earth/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ba9720d52b8b0b8/6988a0ac656a3f731bbcc983/osiris-rex.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5120 og:image:height: 2880 og:image:alt: Just passing through: An artist's rendering of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft at Bennu og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: No, You Don't Have to Worry About Getting Clobbered by an Asteroid twitter:description: At least not much twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2ba9720d52b8b0b8/6988a0ac656a3f731bbcc983/osiris-rex.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # No, You Don't Have to Worry (Much) About Getting Clobbered by an Asteroid > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4e090133-f2df-4b9f-b4ee-a92464fb108f&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: An Asteroid Buzzes the Earth](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/TgSKV2RZ.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2013-02-13. A near miss of the earth by an asteroid could foreshadow future catastrophe from space. TIME's Jeffrey Kluger explains._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Aug 1, 2016 7:26 PM UTC A near miss of the earth by an asteroid could foreshadow future catastrophe from space. TIME's Jeffrey Kluger explains.  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Aug 1, 2016 7:26 PM UTC **Correction appended Aug. 3** On the off-chance you’re alive in 150 years, you could be in for a very bad day, when the asteroid Bennu collides with Earth, unleashing a blast 80,000 times more powerful than that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. OK, the odds are pretty good you won’t be around in 150 years, and they’re only [1 in 2,700](http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risks/notes.shtml) at the very likeliest that Bennu will pay us such a nasty house call. But the space rock is making a lot of news and getting a lot of attention from NASA all the same—and it should. Discovered in 1999, Bennu measures 1,614 ft. (492 m) across and checks two worrisome boxes on the asteroid danger list. It is what astronomers all a near-Earth object (NEO), which is any comet or asteroid that approaches the sun at 1.3 Earth’s distance or closer. Bennu not only gets that close but actually crosses Earth’s orbit every six years as it makes its own circuit through the solar system. It is also what is known as a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA), which is any asteroid that measures 460 ft. (140 m) or more, is close enough to be an NEO and poses a risk of doing serious global or regional damage if it strikes Earth. A blast equivalent to 80,000 Hiroshimas is serious indeed. But Bennu is less worrisome than it seems too. Here’s why. For starters, in order to reach that 1 in 2,700 risk level in 150 years or so, the asteroid first has to be gravitationally nudged from its current course when it passes between Earth and the moon on an earlier approach it will make in 2135\. That could happen: Gravity plays unpredictable tricks on moving bodies, and a body that passes between the gravitational fields of both Earth and the moon can be jostled in innumerable ways. Of course that also means Bennu might be pushed in a direction that makes it less rather than more likely to hit Earth in the future. What’s more, asteroid tracking has become a very precise science—one that is led by [NASA’s Near-Earth Objects Program Office](http://time.com/135476/the-man-who-guards-the-planet/) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. With the help of astronomers around the world, the JPL team has identified and mapped the route of 95% of the dangerous rocks in the solar system measuring 0.62 miles (1 km) or more, and 40% of those in the 460-ft. class. With the help of a bump in funding from Congress that was approved in 2012, JPL expects to get that second number up to 90%. Knowing the course the space rocks take as they make their periodic swings through our cosmic neighborhood does a lot more than just let us know how long our species has to live before an incoming bit of ordnance sends us the way of the dinosaurs. It also means we can do something to prevent the disaster from happening at all. Both NASA and the European Space Agency have gotten very good at visiting asteroids and comets. The ESA’s [Rosetta spacecraft and Philae lander](http://www.esa.int/Our%5FActivities/Space%5FScience/Rosetta/Rosetta%5Fand%5FPhilae%5Fone%5Fyear%5Fsince%5Flanding%5Fon%5Fa%5Fcomet) arrived at comet 67P in 2014 and NASA’s [Dawn spacecraft](http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/) is currently orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres after having already orbited the asteroid Vesta. Similar navigational skills could be used to launch interceptors to asteroids when they are still years away from reaching Earth. Once the spacecraft arrived at the target it could either break it apart with an explosive or, more prudently, simply push it off course either with an engine or simply by crashing into it. NASA will get some practice soon with Bennu itself when it launches the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Sept. 8\. Over the course of its seven-year mission, the probe will fly to Bennu, map its surface and return a small sample of its dust and other material to Earth for study. The mission should reveal more about the chemistry, history and the organic potential of the solar system generally and about Bennu’s composition specifically. The precise makeup of the asteroid could help scientists determine what it would take to destroy or deflect it if the need ever arises. Until then though, as you were. Bennu may or may not be coming our way, but if it is, we’ve got plenty of time to prepare our hello. **Correction:** An earlier version of this story misstated the impact of a collision by asteroid Bennu. It would be the equivalent of 80,000 Hiroshima bombs. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Earth lives in a shooting gallery of asteroids, any one of which could hit us one day. Here's what you need to know. [ MUSIC ] What caused all the stir this week, was a 140 foot long asteroid that buzzed the Earth at an altitude of just 17, 000 miles. Now that sounds like a lot, but it's only 1 / 14th of the weight of the Moon, and it's actually 5, 000 miles below the altitude in which some of our communication satellites fly. The fact is Earth gets hit by space debris all the time. A hundred tons of material enter our atmosphere everyday, including at least one basketball size rock. And every few months a rock about the size of a Volkswagen comes in also. Most of that material is incinerated long before it reaches the ground. But if a rock gets to about 100 to a 150 feet, a significant chunk of it can survive, and that can produce problems. It's not just the size of an asteroid that causes problems. It's the energy it carries as it speeds into the atmosphere. That's why a rock that's relatively small, just 120 feet across, can produce a blast equivalent to 2. 4 megatons, or 180 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb. [ MUSIC ] An asteroid the size of the one that just buzzed the Earth passes by about once every 40 years and will hit the ground about once every 1200 years. The kind of asteroid that causes local, or even global devastation, arrives about once every 10, 000 to 100, 000 years. 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