The US space agency NASA is going to launch a $1 billion 7-year mission to explore asteroid Bennu, which may have all that required for organic life. The asteroid also has a chance of striking our planet late in the coming century.

While speaking to the Sunday Times, Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at Arizona University and the main researcher on the OSIRIS-REx mission, said that it could be destined to result into massive suffering and life loss.

The trajectory of the asteroid can’t be predicted because of what is called the Yarkovsky effect, wherein the asteroid consumes the energy of sunlight and then releases it in the form of heat, serving as a thruster that continuously brings little shifts in its path.

Lauretta said that in case Bennu hits our planet then its impact would be equal to starting 3 billion tons of high explosives, equivalent in potential effect to the asteroid that could have cleared out most life on Earth 66 million years back, though the asteroid is probably nearly 10 kilometers across. Lauretta added that as per their estimations the chance of impact is nearly one in 2,700 between 2175 and 2196.

OSIRIS-Rex is going to help refine researchers estimate of the trajectory of the asteroid, mainly by aiding them in getting a better grasp on its Yarkovsky effect, but this isn’t the key reason for the sending it to Bennu, dubbed after an Egyptian deity.

Bennu is over 4 billion years old. It is a contemporary of asteroids that as per a theory called Panspermia, may have carried fresh elements and water on our planet in its initial stages, providing it with a ready-made foundation from which emergence of life may have taken place.

Lauretta said, “Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid, an ancient relic from the early solar system that is filled with organic molecules. Asteroids like Bennu may have seeded the early Earth with this material, contributing to the primordial soup from which life emerged”.

According to a report in ABC NEWS by Michael Edison Hayden, "The OSIRIS-REx Mission, headed by NASA and the University of Arizona, plan to launch an unmanned spacecraft on September 8 in the efforts to reach Bennu, a large near-Earth asteroid in August 2018, according to a website devoted to the mission."

Bennu has a one in 2,700 chance of hitting Earth, and such an event wouldn't take place for 150 years, he said. People living in the year 2135 would know whether the asteroid posed a threat to hit Earth, he said. In such an instance, Bennu would enter what Lauretta described as a "keyhole" located between the Earth and the moon that would send it in the direction of Earth.

Lauretta said that by the time that it would strike, we would likely have the technology to destroy Bennu, although he acknowledged that we don't have that capacity right now. He mentioned "nukes" as a potential means to protect Earth from Bennu, as well as what he described as a "gravity tractor," or a space craft that would disrupt Bennu's gravitational pull and send it careening off course from Earth.

A report published in NY Post revealed, "The asteroid, named Bennu, crosses Earth’s orbit once every six years and has gotten ever closer since it was discovered in 1999, astronomers told the Sunday Times of London (paywall)."

The probe’s journey will involve a year of orbiting the sun to build up speed before it slingshots back around Earth, using the planet’s gravity to align its orbit with the asteroid’s, the Times reports. They will rendezvous in August 2018.

For the rest of the world, Osiris-Rex’s most important task may be the measurements it makes of a newly discovered force called the Yarkovsky effect, that can send asteroids careening around the solar system and potentially toward Earth. This force makes Bennu’s trajectory hard to predict, but scientists know its position has shifted 100 miles since 1999.