Astronomers, scientists reveal chances of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth

While still a slim chance, scientists have revealed why the probability of a huge asteroid hitting Earth has doubled.

The odds of a “city killer” asteroid hitting Earth in 2032 have been shifting since it was first discovered in December last year.

The chances asteroid 2024 YR4 crashing into Earth on December 22, 2032, have moved from 1.3 per cent (as of January 29), to 1.7 per cent (Feb 1), then dropped to 1.4 per cent (Feb 2).

These odds increased on February 6 to 2.3 per cent, before dipping slightly to 2.2 per cent on February 7.

Experts assure this shifting of the odds is normal in newly-discovered asteroids.

Asteroid 2024 YR4, as observed by the Magdalena Ridge 2.4m telescope at the New Mexico Institute of Technology on January 27, could hit Earth in the future. Scientists are monitoring. Picture: NASA/AFP

“It is true that the probability of impact has doubled recently, but that doesn’t mean that it will keep doing so,” NASA navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia told The New York Times.

Dr Farnocchia works for the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which is one of two organisations monitoring the asteroid. The other is the Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre in Italy, which is part of the European Space Agency.

“What matters is that the probability of impact is very small, and that it is likely to drop to zero as we keep observing 2024 YR4,” he said.

As scientists map possible orbits the asteroid will take, some outcomes show 2024 YR4 will collide with Earth - albeit it slim.

“Even though the probability of impact is small, it is larger than we usually find for other asteroids,” Dr Farnocchia said.

“We just don’t want to take any chances, and so we will keep tracking 2024 YR4.”

EXPERT’S WARNING OVER NEAR-EARTH ASTEROID

What a rock-block.

An award-winning UK scientist warns that it might be too late to deflect the “city killer” asteroid that’s headed toward Earth.

Deflection efforts “might not be able to stop 2024 YR4,” cautioned Robin George Andrews, a London volcanologist and author, in a chilling X post blowing up online.

Discovered hurtling through our galaxy in December 2024, the building-size space rock is reportedly at the top of NASA’s watch list when it comes to deep space dangers, boasting a 1 in 43 chance of striking Earth in 2032.

And while the odds of Armageddon might seem slim, Andrews believes that we’re in big trouble if the intergalactic gravel is indeed on a collision course with our planet.

The scientist threw cold water on the defence potential of the DART (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft, which was successfully used to knock the 580-foot-wide asteroid Dimorphos off course in 2022.

Schematic of the DART mission shows the impact on the moonlet of asteroid Didymos. Post-impact observations from Earth-based optical telescopes and planetary radar would, in turn, measure the change in the moonlet’s orbit about the parent body. Picture: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab

This cosmic kamikaze mission reportedly shortened its orbit by more than half an hour, potentially paving the way for humans to alter the trajectory of other dangerous cosmic bodies.

While Andrews acknowledged that this celestial crash test “worked wonders,” he warned that this doesn’t mean we can “deflect any asteroid whenever we want.”

“So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART,” said the researcher.

He noted that many asteroids are loose rubble piles of sand, dirt and boulders tethered tenuously together by gravity. When hit, they could fragment and potentially send interstellar shrapnel hurtling toward Earth — a phenomenon Andrews analogised to “turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray.”

This file artist's illustration obtained from NASA shows the DART spacecraft from behind prior to impact at the Didymos binary system. Picture: NASA/AFP

Even if the strike was successful, there might not be enough time to significantly alter the asteroid’s path, warned the scientist. He noted that YR4 is arriving in just eight years, while it takes “10 years or more to build, plan and execute an asteroid deflection mission.”

“This is because the deflection a kinetic impactor can give an Earthbound asteroid would be tiny,” he said, noting that DART only altered Dimorphos’ velocity by several millimeters.

“Only over time does the shifted orbit add up enough to ensure it’ll miss Earth.”

“With only a few years down the line, we could accidentally deflect it — but not enough to make it avoid the planet,” Andrews theorised.

“Then, it still hits Earth, just somewhere else that wasn’t going to be hit.”

This outcome could be catastrophic, given that a strike by YR4 would allegedly cause roughly the same amount of damage as the Tunguska event, which laid waste to around 80 million trees in Siberia in 1908, according to Space.com.

The asteroid Dimorphos, which is about 160m across, imaged just before NASA’s DART spacecraft slammed into it in 2022 and altered its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Questions are being raised about whether this course of action should be needed for asteroid 2024 YR4? Picture: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

Despite the potential danger, Andrews assured the public that 2024 YR4 will “probably miss Earth.”

“But if it doesn’t, we have to be wary of trying to save the world but accidentally making the problem worse,” he said. “Maybe we’ll just have to get out of the asteroid’s way this time.”

NASA recently enlisted the aid of the James Webb telescope — the planet’s most powerful — to study 2024 YR4 and gauge how much damage it would cause if it did strike the Earth.

The instrument would help astronomers glean a more accurate measurement of the rock’s size by using its infrared instruments to study the heat emitted by it.

This data will in turn be “used by ESA [the European Space Agency], NASA, and other organisations to more confidently assess the hazard and determine any necessary response,” the ESA wrote.

This story was originally published on The New York Post.

Originally published as Astronomers, scientists reveal chances of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth