Scientist warns of potentially catastrophic impacts if NASA decide to intercept asteroid headed for collision with Earth
An asteroid could be headed for Earth and we might not be able to stop it.
Every now and then, we hear about some space rock that might hit Earth and cause chaos. But this time, things feel a little more serious.
According to reports, '2024 YR4' is supposedly the size of the Statue of Liberty.
US space agency NASA estimated that there's a 1 in 43 chance of the asteroid actually hitting Earth in 2032 - which isn't a comforting number.
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While it was initially spotted in December, scientist Dr. Robin George Andrews warned that even if we try to stop the space rock, we might accidentally make things way worse.
On X, he explained NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission which successfully knocked an asteroid off course with kinetic impact, i.e. slamming a spacecraft into it.
But just because it worked that one time, 'it doesn't mean we can use kinetic impactors like it to deflect any asteroid whenever we want'. Rapidly firing rockets at an asteroid could spell disaster for humanity.
"Nobody wants to accidentally 'disrupt' an asteroid, because those components can still head for Earth," Andrews said. "As I often say, it's like turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray."
He added: "But we aren't going to see it again until another Earth flyby in 2028. So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART."
The scientist claimed that we would need several spacecrafts to hit the asteroid 'perfectly' without 'catastrophically breaking it.'
He continued: "And with only a few years down the line, we could accidentally deflect it — but not enough to make it avoid the planet. Then, it still hits Earth, just somewhere else that wasn't going to be hit.
"Maybe 2024 YR4's odd will rise, and we will successfully deflect it in 2028 using a monster-sized spacecraft. Or maybe we'll break an awkward taboo and instead opt to use a nuclear warhead to try to deflect it, which would provide a bigger punch to the asteroid than DART."
Either way, we don't have much time. And Andrews believes the best thing we can do is evacuate.
Meanwhile, NASA engineer David Rankin of NASA’s Catalina Sky Survey Project has mapped out a 'risk corridor' which gives us a rough idea of where the asteroid could come down.
The map predicts it to collide anywhere around northern South America, across the Pacific Ocean, southern Asia, the Arabian Sea, and Africa.
So the list of potential impact zones includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
And if it does hit us, scientists think it would explode in the atmosphere with a force equivalent to 8 million tons of TNT, affecting an area up to 50 kilometres wide.