Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

OramaBuffin t1_jdoegks wrote

Not very high, asteroids are moving very quickly in general. Swinging by the earth will just slightly bend its trajectory rather than anything resembling sucking it in.

3

reedef t1_jdp1shr wrote

So I started researching and Wikipedia actually has a calculation on this and for an asteroid with hyperbolic excess velocity of 12.5 km/s the effective increase of the cross sectional impact area is 80%. Not x10 or anything but not insignificant either.

The impact is going to be larger than that for objects that approach the earth from nearby orbits.

1