Feb 20, 2025
There is a very small chance that an asteroid capable of taking out an entire city could strike Earth in less than eight years. But even if this asteroid is hurtling our way, humanity is now able to defend itself against such a threat, experts say.
The odds that the recently discovered asteroid will hit Earth on December 22, 2032 have now risen to 3.1 percent, NASA said on Tuesday, the highest probability for an impact by such a large space rock in modern forecasting.
"Don't panic," Richard Moissl, head of the European Space Agency's planetary defence office, told AFP.
As astronomers gather more data, the odds of a direct hit are widely expected to edge upwards before rapidly dropping down to zero.
However, even in the unlikely event that the probability does keep rising up to 100 percent, "we are not defenceless", Moissl emphasised.
Here are some of the ways that humanity could deflect or destroy the asteroid known as 2024 YR4.
- Smash a spacecraft into it -
Only one planetary defence strategy has been tried out on an actual asteroid.
In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) deliberately smashed a spacecraft into the 160-metre-wide Dimorphos asteroid, successfully altering its orbit around a larger space rock.
An advantage of this plan is that we could hit the 2024 YR4 asteroid with multiple spacecrafts, observing how each one changed its trajectory, Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society, told AFP.
The asteroid discovered in December is estimated to be 40-90 metres wide -- roughly half the size of Dimorphos.
"You have to take care not to overdo it," Moissl warned.
If the spacecraft partially destroyed the asteroid, it could send "bits flying off" that still head towards Earth, he said.
If this kind of mishap changed the eventual impact site on Earth -- for example, "from Paris to Moscow" -- that would likely cause major problems back home, Betts added. READ MORE
CREDIT - Daniel Lawler with Issam Ahmed