Asteroid Discovered Hiding in Sun's Glare Could Be a 'Planet Killer' for Earth — But Not Anytime Soon

A large asteroid — estimated to be nearly a mile long and dubbed a "planet killer" — has been discovered by scientists.

The space rock, which could potentially pose a danger to planet Earth — though not anytime soon — had been hidden behind the glare of the sun, according to a press release from NOIRLab.

Based on a new study published in The Astronomical Journal in September, the 2022 AP7 is likely the largest Potentially Hazardous Asteroid discovered in the last eight years. It is also one of three near-Earth asteroids that were found orbiting between Earth and Venus.

The other two have been named 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, with the latter being the closest known asteroid to the sun. Its surface is hot enough to melt lead during its orbit, the study said.

Scientists were able to detect the new findings by using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

"Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids," Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., and the lead author of the study, said in a statement.

"So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers."

He added, per the New York Times, "If this one hits the Earth, it would cause planetwide destruction. It would be very bad for life as we know it."

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Finding the space rocks was a huge observational challenge given the astronomers only had two 10-minute windows each night during which they could survey the inner solar system to avoid the intense impact of light from the sun.

The new technology provided by the DECam, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, made it possible for astronomers to capture areas in the sky with great sensitivity, resulting in deep and wide-field observations.

"Large areas of sky are required because the inner asteroids are rare, and deep images are needed because asteroids are faint and you are fighting the bright twilight sky near the Sun as well as the distorting effect of Earth's atmosphere," Sheppard explained, per NOIRLab. "DECam can cover large areas of sky to depths not achievable on smaller telescopes, allowing us to go deeper, cover more sky, and probe the inner Solar System in ways never done before."

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However, after studying the 2022 AP7's motion by retrospectively identifying it in older images, the accumulated data from the observation showed the asteroid would not land on Earth within the next century or even longer.

"There is an extremely low probability of an impact in the foreseeable future," Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who was not involved with the study, told NYT.

Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast who was also not involved in the study, said, per the publication, there's a possibility that "way down the line, in the next few thousand years, it could turn into a problem for our descendants."