Asteroids around Venus pose possible 'invisible threat' to Earth: Should you be worried?
The giant space rocks are believed to be traveling in tandem with Venus as the planet orbits the sun, eluding our detection by staying hidden in the sun's glare. Because their orbits are unstable, a possibility exists – however remote – that the asteroids could break off from their current trajectory and one day head on a collision course for Earth.
The findings are just the latest instance in which asteroids have gotten some ominous publicity in 2025. Earlier this year, an asteroid dubbed 2024 YR4 became infamous when astronomers briefly calculated a historically high chance of it impacting Earth.
In that case, there was no reason to panic, as YR4 was ultimately ruled out as a threat. And there's likely no cause for alarm in this latest case, either.
Rather, the team of researchers led by Valerio Carruba, an assistant professor at São Paolo University in Brazil, simply hopes to raise awareness among astronomers and attract more scientific interest in the asteroids.
Here's what to know about the Venusian asteroids, and just how concerned you should be about whether there's any immediate danger of a collision with Earth.
The second planet from the sun, Venus is sometimes called Earth's twin because it is not only our closest planetary neighbor, but similar in structure and size to our planet.
Astronomers who authored the new research recently discovered around at least 20 asteroids around Venus. The space rocks are known as co-orbital asteroids because they orbit the sun alongside the planet without orbiting Venus itself.
The asteroids are theorized to have most likely originated from debris in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. And astronomers think that because they're obscured from our view, there are most likely more of them yet to be discovered.
Because they're at least 460 feet wide, the Venusian space rocks are large enough to be considered "city killers" – a size that would make them perfectly capable of doing some pretty serious damage to a populated area if given the chance.
That moniker may be alarming, and it may have contributed to some of the sensationalistic media coverage the researchers' findings have attracted in tabloid publications. The New York Post, for instance, claimed Earth could be hit by the asteroids "within weeks."
Rest assured, nothing in the study concretely supports such a wild assertion.
But because these hidden asteroids can change their trajectories relative to Venus, it's possible they could be diverted on a path toward Earth sometime in the coming millennia.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers conducted a series of computer simulations to determine whether any potential hidden asteroid circling Venus could threaten Earth in the future.
This involved constructing replica computer models of the known co-orbital asteroids around Venus and observing their orbits across 36,000 years.
The astronomers believe that new observational tools, like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory under construction in Chile, could help detect some of these asteroids in the future. The observatory, due to become operational in 2025, is set to scan the sky for 10 years.
The researchers also advocate for dedicated missions to hunt for Venusian asteroids.
The findings, uploaded May 21 to the preprint server arXiv and is undergoing peer review after it was submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
YR4 and its much larger cousin, the equally infamous Apophis were the most alarming space rocks astronomers have discovered and studied for decades.
Now that they have been ruled out as threats to Earth, astronomers still studying such imposing space rocks could help the world's space agencies prepare to mount a planetary defense if the need ever arose.
NASA and the European Space Agency bot had plans to send uncrewed spacecraft to observe Apophis in the years ahead to map and study its surface to gain further insights into near-Earth asteroids. However, NASA's mission is in jeopardy under President Donald Trump's budget.
Protecting Earth from incoming space rocks could look a little like the test NASA pulled off in 2022 when it demonstrated that it was possible to nudge an incoming asteroid out of harm's way by slamming a spacecraft into one as part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. As of October, a craft from the European Space Agency is on the way to get an up-close look at the asteroid's remnants.
NASA is additionally working on an asteroid-hunting telescope known as the NEO Surveyor to find near-Earth objects capable of causing significant damage. Now set to launch no earlier than 2027, the telescope is designed to discover 90% of asteroids and comets that are 460 feet in size or larger and come within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit.
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Earth, asteroids threat? Venus may be hiding 'killer' asteroids
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National Geographic
6 days ago
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