Doom From Space: NASA Predicts 'Apocalyptic' Valentine's Day in 2019

18:50 GMT, 13 February 2019

CC BY 2.0 / NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / BENNU’S JOURNEY - Heavy Bombardment

While the US space agency provided directions to people who might wish to spot the “apocalypse asteroid”, it also noted that doing so would be impossible without a telescope due to the space rock’s relatively small size.

Sputnik

As people around the world begin celebrating Valentine’s Day, NASA reveals that stargazers will be treated to a unique show during the occasion.

According to the space agency, planet Mars will be visible in the sky this month as a red dot that can be spotted a couple of hours after sunset.

Frequent Visitor: Asteroid Larger Than Statue of Liberty Approaches Earth

5 February 2019, 11:42 GMT

But on 14 February, the Bennu asteroid — a 1,600-foot rock weighing about 87 million tonnes which currently orbits the Sun between Earth and Mars, and which was branded as an "apocalypse asteroid" by the media — “will be located just to the right of Mars, about the width of your fist held at arm's length”.

"So on the 14th give a little wave to Bennu-and OSIRIS-Rex while you're at it," the space agency wrote in a post.

As NASA points out, however, Bennu is simply too small to be seen without a telescope.

Also, the space.com news website argued that Bennu shouldn’t be regarded as some kind of instrument of doomsday as it only has a one in 2,700 chance of hitting our planet in the next century, not to mention that the damage caused by such hypothetical impact would be significant but local, not global.

Earlier, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft entered orbit around Bennu and provided researchers with first photos of the space rock.