Scientists conducted an extensive observational campaign, which involved the most powerful telescopes in the world, in order to find out if an asteroid called " These observations showed that the space rock will still fly past our planet, Space reports.. com.

The European Space Agency has named asteroid 2021 QM1 " Numerous observations and recalculations of its orbit showed that it should fall to Earth in April 2052..

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But observations made with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world, have helped rule out the possibility of a collision.. Telescope watched 'space rock' as it moved as it became 'the dimmest asteroid ever observed'.

Several telescopes observed 2021 QM1 shortly after it was discovered by the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.. With each sighting, it became increasingly clear that three decades later, the asteroid would come " The fall of a celestial body with a diameter of about 48 meters would cause damage equivalent to the explosion of a nuclear bomb over Hiroshima.

“These early observations gave us more information about the asteroid's trajectory, which we then projected into the future.. We could see its future paths around the sun, and in 2052 it could come dangerously close to Earth.. The more the asteroid was observed, the higher the risk became,” said Richard Moissl, head of the planetary protection department of the European Space Agency..

When the risk of impact was estimated to be incredibly high, the asteroid briefly disappeared from view in bright sunlight as its orbit approached the star.. Scientists knew that by the time the “space rock” came back into view, it would be too dim to be seen with most existing telescopes.. So they turned to the Very Large Telescope for research.. But for him it was not an easy task..

" To make matters worse, it was passing through an area of \u200b\u200bthe sky where the Milky Way was right behind it.. Our small, faint, receding asteroid should have been found against a backdrop of thousands of stars.. These were the most complex asteroid observations we have ever made,” said ESO astronomer Olivier Henault..

The telescope was able to detect 2021 QM1 when its magnitude was 27. For comparison, the magnitude of the Sun, the brightest object in our sky, is minus 27 (the magnitude scale reverses the actual brightness of objects; stars in the sky have a magnitude of about 0).

These observations were enough to find out that in 2052 the collision of an asteroid with the Earth will not take place..