The Russian Academy of Sciences named the number of near-Earth asteroids

About 40 thousand near-Earth asteroids have been discovered by scientists to date. This was announced on April 13 by Nikolai Zheleznov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Applied Astronomy (IPA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

According to the scientist, more than 1 million asteroids have been discovered in the Solar system. Most of them are located in the Main Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

"In addition, there is a group of asteroids called near—Earth asteroids (ASPs). And now there are about 40 thousand of these facilities open today. The opening process is proceeding quite quickly," he said in an interview with RIA Novosti.

Such objects include asteroids of various sizes, including large bodies with a diameter of more than 1 km. Potentially dangerous ones include those that have at least once approached the Earth or can approach it at a distance of 7.5 million km.

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Senior Researcher at the Department of Space Ballistics and Mathematical Data Processing at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI RAS) Nathan Eismont said on April 9 that among the thousands of known near—Earth objects, most do not pose an immediate threat, but two asteroids — Bennu and Ryugu - may collide with Earth in the foreseeable future. He added that the real danger to the planet is always higher than current estimates based only on already discovered sites.

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