蜜芽传媒

Now here's a date for your diary if you like planning ahead...

Nasa astronomers now know when asteroid Bennu, already considered the second most dangerous asteroid in the Solar System, will make its close approach to the Earth - and say that the day it is most likely to strike is the 24th of September, 2182.

Over the last few years scientists have been gathering data about its path and have now condensed its predictions into one report.

Davide Farnocchia is from Nasa's Centre for Near Earth Object Studies. He says we can all relax, for now.

"It's all a matter of how much time you have available to develop a mission to go to the asteroid and tweak its trajectory so that it would miss. For Bennu we have plenty of time. Really the important thing is to find asteroids before they find us."

(Photo: A mosaic of Bennu created using observations made by NASA鈥檚 OSIRIS-REx spacecraft over two years. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona)