NASA Announces No Asteroid is Scheduled to Collide with Earth in September

Recently, many blogs and web postings have claimed that an asteroid will impact Earth at some point between Sept. 15 and Sept. 18. Fortunately for Earthlings everywhere, though, this isn't true.

"There is no scientific basis-not one shred of evidence-that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth on those dates," said Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a news release.

The Near-Earth Object office is a key group involved with the international collaboration of astronomers and scientists who keep watch on the sky with their telescopes, looking for asteroids that could impact our planet. This group predicts the paths of asteroids through space for the foreseeable future; if there were any asteroids headed toward Earth, Chodas and his group would know about it.

In fact, the program says that there have been no asteroids or comets observed that would impact Earth any time in the foreseeable future. In addition, all known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have less than a .01 percent chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years.

This isn't the first time that media has claimed that an asteroid might impact Earth. In 2011, there were rumors about a comet named Elenin. However, the comet never posed any danger of harming Earth, just as NASA said it would.

"Again, there is no existing evidence that an asteroid or any other celestial object is on a trajectory that will impact Earth," said Chodas. "In fact, not a single one of the known objects has any credible chance of hitting our planet over the next century."

For more information about near-Earth objects, visit NASA's website.

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