Will the asteroid 1981 Midas collide with the Earth in the 22nd century?
According to computations by A. F. Zavsaev published in Solar System Research vol. 26, no. 4, page 375, this asteroid will come within 0.0485 Astronomical Units of the Earth on September 20, 2129. One Astronomical Unit is equal to 93 million miles so the passage will be within 4 million miles of the Earth. For a comparison, the asteroid 1620 Geographos came within 0.033 AU of the Earth on August 25, 1994. According to the May, 2000 revised list of Near-Earth Asteroids at the Minor Planets Center, the revised orbit indicates a close encounter on March 21, 2018 of 0.0896 AU. This is about twice the distance estimated from previous orbits made in 1997.
