Terrifying reason NASA might not be able to intercept asteroid headed on a collision course with Earth
One key factor could be a major roadblock in NASA's mission to intercept and divert the asteroid threatening to collide with Earth, and many are starting to get worried.
Time is of the essence when it comes to 2024 YR4 - the asteroid currently around 27 million miles away that scientists estimate could eventually crash into Earth in under a decade.
Initial projections indicate that the chunk of space rock is somewhere in between 40 and 90 meters wide, which could have major ramifications when it comes to the threat it poses on our planet.
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At the moment these measurements are difficult to achieve due to the light-dependent nature of standard space telescopes that rely on reflections from the Sun, but NASA have activated emergency measures to begin using the James Webb Space Telescope instead.
The Webb Telescope allows for a much more accurate infrared reading thanks to it's MIRI instrument, which should be able to give a precise breakdown of its size, velocity, and orbit.
Scientists studying 2024 YR4 don't have very long though, as there's just a couple of months before it disappears from view, and it won't reappear again until 2028.
One of the major theories surrounding against against this impending threat involves launching a spaceship to crash into the asteroid and divert its course. This has been successfully achieved previously with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test ('DART' for short) a couple of years ago, where a small spacecraft managed to knock the 525-foot wide Dimorphos around 7 million miles from Earth.
These methods have been supported by one famous physicist, who has indicated that this is the Universe's way of testing humanity's capacity to deal with threats like these, but one major scientist has cast his own doubts on the viability of a DART-like procedure in the case of 2024 YR4.
As reported by NewScientist, Juan Cano at the European Space Agency has indicated that time, or lack thereof, might be the defining factor when it comes to our inability to divert the asteroid as it closes in:
"Eight years would be very, very tight," Cano explains. "We typically need between three and five years to construct and build a spacecraft in order to do this job, and then we would also need between half a year and a year to fly to the object."
On top of this, DART-like projects can only be recommended for asteroids over the 50-meter range, and its currently not concrete that 2024 YR4 meets this criteria.
This lower threshold is likely due to the risk present within the formation of smaller asteroids, which Dr. Robin George Andrews has pointed out.
Dr. Andrews illustrates that smaller asteroids are more typically 'rubble piles' instead of single rock structures, and thus have the chance of fracturing into countless smaller pieces upon a spacecraft's impact, effectively 'shotgunning' Earth in the process.