We come across news about a huge asteroid passing by Earth at extremely high speed on a regular basis. But have you ever wondered whether one of these space rocks will hit our planet? Well, a NASA scientist has an interesting take on the topic.

Recently, NASA released a video with scientist Kelly Fast, as an asteroid expert using her expertise to develop a planetary defense system, giving her take on the question, “Will an asteroid ever hit Earth?”

No point losing your sleep

She responded saying: “Yes, asteroids have hit Earth over the course of its history and it will happen again.” But with time we’re getting better at spotting and tracking potentially hazardous space rocks.

Bits of space rock and dust can often be seen crashing into Earth’s atmosphere, giving a mesmerizing meteor shower. Asteroids that can harm our planet are very rare. “They happen on time scales of hundreds to thousands to millions of years,” Fast said.

In July, researchers from the Southwest Research Institute calculated the kind of asteroid strikes that wiped dinosaurs from Earth occur every 250 million years. The dinosaur-wiping blast happened 66 million years ago, so there’s a lot of time to develop a system that can save the planet from such strikes.

Defending Earth from asteroids

This doesn’t mean scientists aren’t tracking potentially dangerous asteroids such as Bennu. That rock has a 1 in 1,750 chance of colliding with Earth in the future. NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office tweeted that there aren’t any known asteroid impact threats to our planet for the next 100 years.

Recently, a team of scientists found the fastest moving asteroid in our solar system. The asteroid is small in size, just 1 km across, and is called 2021 PH27. It orbits the Sun in only 113 Earth days. It also has the shortest orbital period of any known celestial object, except for Mercury, which orbits the Sun in just 88 days. The discovery will allow astronomers to learn more about asteroids in our solar system and how they were formed.