Since the late 20th century, astronomers and space agencies have taken steps to monitor the threat of large asteroids passing near Earth. They set up international efforts to find these objects early, track their paths, and learn more about what they’re made of, so we’d have the best chance of spotting a real collision risk in time.
As the chart shows, more than 40,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered and tracked since 1990. NASA estimates that we’ve already found over 90% of near-Earth objects larger than 1 kilometer. These are the most dangerous ones, because an impact at that size could cause global-scale damage.
Explore more interactive charts on space exploration and satellites →
Where this page came from
This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Over 40,000 near-Earth asteroids have been detected since 1990” by Edouard Mathieu, Pablo Rosado, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.
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Licence: CC BY 4.0 · Adapted from ourworldindata.org
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