A massive asteroid discovered last month could crash into Earth and it has now triggered a planetary defence response having moved to the top of impact risk lists
A newly-discovered 100 metre wide asteroid heading towards Earth has triggered a planetary defence response group.
Spotted last month by a telescope in Chile, the near-Earth asteroid – designated 2024 YR4 has a chance of smashing into Earth in 2032, said space agency officials in the US and Europe, who have placed it at the top of impact risk lists. Still the chances of it striking Earth are minimal and it would not cause a mass extinction as happened 66m years ago when an asteroid led to an end of the dinosaurs as that was up to 15 kilometres wide.
Scientists put the odds of a strike at slightly more than 1%. “We are not worried at all, because of this 99% chance it will miss,” said Paul Chodas, director of Nasa’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies. “But it deserves attention.”
And Catalina Sky Survey engineer David Rankin wrote on Bluesky : “This is one of the highest probabilities of an impact from a significantly sized rock ever. Most likely outcome is still a near miss.”
The discovery of the asteroid has led to the activation of two UN-endorsed global asteroid response groups. The International Asteroid Warning Network is now making further observations of the asteroid and its path while the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group has also been alerted.
The two groups would look at the chances of the asteroid striking Earth and propose a plan to intervene such as possibly using a spacecraft to intercept it a technique tested in Nasa’s Dart mission. The asteroid route is being closely watched as it moves around the sun and it will gradually fade from view over the next few months, according to Nasa and the European Space Agency. Until then, some of the world’s most powerful telescopes will keep monitoring it to better determine its size and path. Once out of sight, it will not be visible until it passes our way again in 2028.
It came within roughly 500,000 miles of Earth on Christmas Day which is about twice the distance to the moon and it was discovered two days later. Mr Chodas said scientists are poring over sky surveys from 2016, when predictions show the asteroid also ventured close. If scientists can find the space rock in images from then, they should be able to determine whether it will hit or miss the planet. “If we don’t find that detection, the impact probability will just move slowly as we add more observations,” he said.
Earth gets clobbered by an asteroid this size every few thousand years with the potential for severe damage, according to ESA. That is why this one now tops ESA’s asteroid risk list. The potential impact would occur on December 22 2032. It is too soon to know where it might land if it did hit Earth. The good news, according to Nasa, is that for now, no other known large asteroids have an impact probability above 1%.