Asteroid Update II

I’m never going to understand how this works but the probability of Asteroid 2004 MN4 hitting Earth has now gone to one chance in 56,000 or a 99.9982% probability the asteroid will miss the Earth.

From NASA JPL –

Over the past week, several independent efforts were made to search for pre-discovery observations of 2004 MN4. These efforts proved successful today when Jeff Larsen and Anne Descour of the Spacewatch Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, were able to detect and measure very faint images of asteroid 2004 MN4 on archival images dating to 15 March 2004. These observations extended the observed time interval for this asteroid by three months allowing an improvement in its orbit so that an Earth impact on 13 April 2029 can now be ruled out.

As is often the case, the possibility of future Earth impacts for some near-Earth objects cannot be entirely ruled out until the uncertainties associated with their trajectories are reduced as a result of either future position observations, or in this case, heretofore unrecognized, pre-discovery observations. When these additional observations were used to update the orbit of 2004 MN4, the uncertainties associated with this object’s future positions in space were reduced to such an extent that none of the object’s possible trajectories can impact the Earth (or Moon) in 2029.

As you were.

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