NASA issues major update on 'city-killer' asteroid 2024's chance of crashing into the Moon
NASA has raised the odds that a massive asteroid, about the size of a 10-storey building, could collide with Earth's Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4, discovered in December 2024, initially posed a potential risk to Earth in 2032.
However, recent updates from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies indicate an increased likelihood that it could strike the Moon instead. And now, the space agency has revealed whether it could disrupt the Moon's orbit.
While asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently too distant to detect with telescopes from Earth, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope collected one more observation of the asteroid before it escaped from view in its orbit around the Sun.
With the additional data, experts got greater insight into where the rock - as big as London's Big Ben - will be on December 22, 2032, by nearly 20 per cent.
As a result, the asteroid's probability of impacting the Moon has increased from 3.8 per cent to 4.3 per cent.
While this still leaves a 95.7 percent chance of the asteroid missing the Moon, the small possibility of a collision has caught scientists' attention.
Despite the risk, in the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon's orbit.
When asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered, it had a small chance of impacting Earth.
After more observations, NASA concluded the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond.
As is common with asteroid predictions, the chances of an impact often fluctuate, rising and falling as new data emerges. To that end, it is normal for the impact probability to evolve, NASA assured.
The 100-metre wide rock once had a 3.1 per cent probability of colliding with Earth on December 22, 2032, potentially leaving a trail of devastation in its wake.
If the asteroid was on track to smack into our planet in 2032, its impact would be catastrophic. The energy released could be equivalent to eight megatons of TNT, destroying an area the size of Washington, DC.
An eight-megaton explosion would be over 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War Two, which had a yield of approximately 15 kilotons (0.015 megatons).
NASA was reportedly concerned at one point that the probability of the asteroid hitting Earth might surpass the 20 per cent threshold at one point.
In February, the huge space rock's were reduced from an earlier estimate of 131-295 feet (40-90 metres) to a more accurate range of 174-220 feet (53-67 metres) - roughly the size of a 10-storey building.
An international team led by Dr. Andy Rivkin from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, made the most recent observations using Webb's Near-Infrared Camera in May.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now too far away to observe with either space or ground-based telescopes. NASA expects to make further observations when the asteroid's orbit around the Sun brings it back into the vicinity of Earth in 2028.
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