The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide. It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it.
Talk about the asteroid was on the agenda during the 49th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), held earlier this month in Vienna.
A UN Action Team on near-Earth objects (NEOs) noted the asteroid’s repeat approaches to Earth and the possibility — however remote — that 2011 AG5 might smack into our planet 28 years from now.
The object was discovered in January 2011 by Mount Lemmon Survey observers in Tucson, Ariz. While scientists have a good bead on the space rock's size, its mass and compositional makeup are unknown at present.
According to Detlef Koschny of the European Space Agency's Solar System Missions Divisions in Noordwijk, The Netherlands: "2011 AG5 is the object which currently has the highest chance of impacting the Earth...in 2040. However, we have only observed it for about half an orbit, thus the confidence in these calculations is still not very high."
Koschny said the Action Team recommended that the NEO Working Group of COPUOS use 2011 AG5 as a "desktop exercise" in preparation for future asteroid collisions with the Earth. "We are currently also in the process of making institutions like the European Southern Observatory aware of this object," Koschny said. "We hope to make the point that this object deserves the allocation of some special telescope time."
