The Head of Russia’s Space agency stated on Wednesday that the country would be considering sending a special spacecraft to the asteroid. The main aim of this spacecraft will be that of averting the collision by diverting the path of the asteroid.

In an interview with the Golos Rossi Radio, Anatoly Perminov from the space agency, stated that the Russian space agency will soon be planning a meeting with the other major space centers like NASA, the Chinese Space agency and the European Space Agency. And the main subject of the meeting will be that of assessing the mission to the asteroid, once it is finalized.

This 270m asteroid was most primarily discovered in the year 2004, and since its discovery it is being studied by the astronomers. The astronomers at that point estimated that the possibility of Apophis striking the earth is as high as 1 in 37 and that it would probably strike in the year 2029. However, with the passing time, this possibility has just lowered.

In the later studies performed on Apophis, the impact due on 2029 was simply ruled out based on the latest data. According to this study it was estimated that the asteroid would not be closing in on earth and thus the chances of the impact was just minimal. Similar results were also produced that mentioned the year of impact to be 2036 and 2068 with possibilities of 1 in 45,000 and 1 in 330,000 respectively.

However the fact cannot be denied that the asteroid is constantly moving closer and is believed to hit our home planet by 2032. Perminov said, “People’s lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people,”

Adding to this he further stated, “Calculations show that it’s possible to create a special purpose spacecraft within the time we have, which would help avoid the collision without destroying it (the asteroid) and without detonating any nuclear charges,” He thus said that the collision can be successfully averted.