Featured Image Credit: Maciej Frolow/Getty Images
Earth might be able to witness a once-in-five-thousand-year event on the moon and it is coming sooner than you think.
When Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first found in December 2024, it was determined that there was a remote possibility of it hitting Earth.
That was because it was placed at Level 3 on the Torino impact scale, which measures the likelihood of a collision and the scale of the threat and damage.
Level 3 meant that there would be a 1.2% chance of the asteroid making impact with our planet on December 22, 2032.
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However, experts are now considering the possibility that the asteroid could miss Earth altogether and instead collide with a nearby rock - our moon.
According to NASA estimates based on JWST data, there is a one in 23 chance of the space rock hitting the Moon, with a new paper detailing how the rare event could cause material to eject to Earth.
Speaking to IFL Science, planetary scientist Dr Andrew Rivkin said: “The odds of an impact into the Moon have always been there. It's been lower at that time because the Earth [was] a bigger target.
“The way that the orbit improved made the position move away from the Earth, but it moved toward the Moon. So there's like almost a 4 percent chance it's going to hit the Moon. That means there's a better than 96 percent chance it's going to miss the Moon, but if it did hit the Moon, it really would be pretty spectacular.”
In a statement after the discovery of the asteroid, NASA said: “Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first reported on Dec. 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Center– the international clearing house for small-body positional measurements – by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile. The asteroid, which is estimated to be about 130 to 300 feet wide, caught astronomers’ attention when it rose on the NASA automated Sentry risk list on Dec. 31, 2024.
“The Sentry list includes any known near-Earth asteroids that have a non-zero probability of impacting Earth in the future.
“There have been several objects in the past that have risen on the risk list and eventually dropped off as more data have come in. New observations may result in reassignment of this asteroid to zero as more data come in. ”
The European Space Agency (ESA) also revealed that it is ‘actively monitoring’ the space rock.
It added: “It is possible that asteroid 2024 YR4 will fade from view before we are able to entirely rule out any chance of impact in 2032. In this case, the asteroid will likely remain on ESA’s risk list until it becomes observable again in 2028.”
