Asteroid 2007 WD5 will not impact Mars on January 30!
Malgorzata Krolikowska, Grzegorz Sitarski

TL;DR
Using Monte Carlo orbit cloning with recent observations, the study shows asteroid 2007 WD5 will not impact Mars on January 30, significantly reducing the previously estimated impact probability to near zero.
Contribution
The paper applies Monte Carlo orbit cloning with updated observations to accurately assess impact risk of asteroid 2007 WD5.
Findings
Impact probability reduced to 0.03% after initial observations.
Further observations decrease impact chance to effectively zero.
Asteroid will pass at a safe distance from Mars.
Abstract
The Monte Carlo method of the nominal orbit clonning was applied to the case of 2007 WD5, the asteroid from the Apollo group. Calculations based on 33 observations from the time interval of 2007 11 08 - 2008 01 02 showed that the asteroid will pass near planet Mars at the minimum distance of 10.9\pm 2.9 R_{Mars}, what implies that probability that 2007 WD5 strike the planet decreased to the value of 0.03% from the value of about 3--4% previously announced by NASA. The additional observations taken on January 3--9 reduce further the asteroid's impact chances, effectively to nil: the asteroid will pass near planet Mars at the minimum distance of 8.4\pm 1.1 R_{Mars}.
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAstro and Planetary Science · Planetary Science and Exploration
