Scientist gives chilling update on the ‘city-destroying’ asteroid heading towards Earth – and warns NASA has left it too late to deflect it
Being wiped out by a massive space rock that hits Earth at thousands of miles an hour may sound like a plot worthy of a Hollywood film.
But a newly-discovered space rock, called 2024 YR4, really is on a collision course with Earth.
Only discovered at the end of last year, 2024 YR4 is somewhere between 130 to 300 ft (40 to 90 metres) in diameter – so likely bigger than the Statue of Liberty.
Last week, scientists upgraded the risk that 2024 YR4 will hit Earth to 1-in-43 (2.3 per cent), with an impact date of December 22, 2032.
Now, in a chilling update on X, a scientist says ‘we might not be able to stop 2024 YR4’ from hitting Earth, even with a deflection mission.
Dr Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist and author based in London, points out that we ‘have less than eight years to potentially deal with it’.
‘You need 10 years or more to build, plan and execute an asteroid deflection mission,’ he said.
‘We don’t have much time.’
Scientists currently predict that the 90-metre-wide (300 feet) asteroid 2024 YR4 has a one in 43 chance of hitting Earth in 2032. If it does it would cause widespread damage to a populated area
Dr Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist and author based in London, says ‘we might not be able to stop 2024 YR4’
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, surely one of its greatest feats ever, demonstrated how a space rock could potentially be thrown off a collision course with Earth by crashing a spacecraft into it.
The DART spacecraft launched from California in November 2021 and completed its 10-month journey when it hit the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022.
Dimorphos, around 560 feet in diameter, orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos, both of which are around 6.8 million miles away from our planet.
The collision shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by more than half an hour – making it an even greater success than NASA had anticipated.
However, neither Dimorphos nor its Didymos posed any danger to Earth; instead, DART was rehearsal of what may be required if a space rock does one day threaten our planet.
Although he acknowledged DART ‘worked wonders’, Dr Andrews said we ‘might not be able to stop 2024 YR4’ in a similar way.
‘It doesn’t mean we can use kinetic impactors like it to deflect any asteroid whenever we want,’ he said.
‘So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART.’
On average, Earth is hit by a football pitch-sized rock every 5,000 years, and a civilisation-ending asteroid every one million years, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program
Already, NASA has reached a hugely-important milestone with the DART asteroid deflection mission. In September 2022, the DART spacecraft was intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, an asteroid 6.8 million miles away
The Dimorphos space rock is pictured here as seen by the DART spacecraft 11 seconds before impact
Most asteroids are not solid rock but ‘rubble piles’ – clusters of loose boulders, stones and sand held together by the weak mutual gravity of space.
At the moment, we don’t know the exact size of 2024 YR4, or even if it’s a rubble pile asteroid too – but hitting rubble pile asteroids with a spacecraft like DART could potentially generate a cloud of debris that could head towards Earth anyway.
‘Nobody wants to accidentally “disrupt” an asteroid, because those components can still head for Earth,’ Dr Andrews said.
There’s also the chance that a mammoth space effort akin to DART wouldn’t even sufficiently alter the asteroid’s path.
‘With only a few years down the line, we could accidentally deflect it – but not enough to make it avoid the planet,’ the expert added.
‘Then, it still hits Earth, just somewhere else that wasn’t going to be hit.’
He added: ‘I’m not saying a kinetic impactor mission, or missions, couldn’t work.
‘But we don’t have much time, and we don’t have enough info about this rapidly fading asteroid to properly inform our planetary defense decisions yet.’
Asteroid 2024 YR4 is about the same size as the Tunguska asteroid, which caused the largest impact event in recorded history when it shot through Earth’s atmosphere in 1908, flattening 830 square miles (2,150 square km) of forest (pictured)
It’s worth remembering that 2024 YR4 has a 1-in-43 (2.3 per cent) chance of impacting Earth on December 2032.
Dr Andrews stressed ‘the odds of an impact remain low’, likening the situation to having 43 buttons in front of you and being asked to press one of them.
‘I don’t think you should be concerned,’ he said in an accompanying blog post.
‘When more observations come in, it’s probable that the impact odds will plummet to a zero as the orbit of the asteroid is more precisely defined.’
If its point of impact is in the middle of a desert, or in the ocean, it will ‘harm nobody’, but if it hits a town or city, it will ‘destroy much of it’.
On average, Earth is hit by a football pitch-sized rock every 5,000 years, and a civilisation-ending asteroid every one million years, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program.
Last year, a NASA report found we’re poorly-prepared for an asteroid collision, even if we detected the object 14 years in advance.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 is thought to be at least the same size as the Tunguska asteroid – which had an estimated diameter of 130 feet, according to NASA.
Tunguska caused the largest impact event in recorded history when it shot through Earth’s atmosphere in 1908, flattening 830 square miles (2,150 square km) of forest.
Many lost consciousness and at least three people passed away as a direct consequence of the Tunguska event, according to a 2019 study.
