Is an asteroid going to hit Earth soon?

No known asteroid larger than 140 metres has a significant chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years. Small rocks hit regularly but burn up or explode high in the atmosphere.

What does Torino scale 1 mean?

A routine discovery with an extremely unlikely chance of collision, which further observations will almost certainly reduce to zero.

Will Apophis hit Earth in 2029?

No. On 13 April 2029 it will pass about 32,000 km above the surface, close enough to see with the naked eye, with no chance of impact.

Will an Asteroid Hit Earth? How the Risk Is Tracked

Asteroids pass between the Earth and the Moon several times a month, and small ones hit the atmosphere every day. A dangerous impact is very unlikely in our lifetimes, and the large asteroids that could cause one are the ones we know best.

How often things hit us

Dust and pebbles hit the atmosphere constantly. They are the meteors you see on any clear night.
Metre-sized rocks arrive every few weeks and explode high up as fireballs. US government sensors detect the biggest ones, and NASA publishes them.
Around 20 metres, like the Chelyabinsk meteor over Russia in 2013, happens every few decades. Its air burst broke windows across a city.
Around 50 metres, like the Tunguska event in Siberia in 1908, is thought to happen every few centuries and can flatten a forest.
A kilometre or more could cause global damage, but impacts like this happen only every few hundred thousand years, and surveys have found nearly all of them. None is on a collision course.

How the risk is tracked

Telescopes around the world scan the sky every clear night for moving objects. When a new near-Earth asteroid is found, its orbit is calculated and projected a century ahead. NASA's Sentry system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory lists every object that has any chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years.

A new object often appears on the list with a small impact chance because its orbit is uncertain. As more observations come in the uncertainty shrinks, and in almost every case the chance drops to zero and the object is removed. That is the normal process, not a near miss.

NASA says no known asteroid larger than 140 metres has a significant chance of hitting Earth in the next 100 years.

The Torino and Palermo scales

The Torino scale rates the hazard from 0 to 10, combining the impact chance with the size. 0 means no hazard; 1 means routine discovery, with an extremely unlikely collision that will almost certainly be ruled out. Higher levels have only ever been reached briefly, and later observations brought them back to 0.

The Palermo scale is used by scientists. It compares an object's risk with the normal background risk from all asteroids. Values below −2 mean the object is of no real concern.

Close approaches to look forward to

On 13 April 2029, the 340-metre asteroid Apophis will pass about 32,000 km above Earth's surface, closer than many satellites. It will be visible to the naked eye from Europe, Africa and western Asia. There is no chance of it hitting us.

Could we stop one?

In 2022 NASA's DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into the small asteroid moon Dimorphos and shortened its orbit by about 32 minutes. It was the first test showing that an asteroid's path can be changed. With enough warning, a spacecraft could nudge a threatening asteroid aside.

Asteroids & Meteors shows every upcoming close approach on a live radar, and NASA's Sentry list explained in plain words.