The Odds of a City-Killer Asteroid Impact in 2032 Keep Rising
Freeman writes:
An asteroid discovered late last year is continuing to stir public interest as its odds of striking planet Earth less than eight years from now continue to increase.
Two weeks ago, when Ars first wrote about the asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimated a 1.9 percent chance of an impact with Earth in 2032. NASA's most recent estimate has the likelihood of a strike increasing to 3.2 percent. Now that's not particularly high, but it's also not zero.
[...] Ars connected with Robin George Andrews, author of the recently published book How to Kill an Asteroid.
[...] Ars: Why are the impact odds increasing?
Robin George Andrews: The asteroid's orbit is not known to a great deal of precision right now, as we only have a limited number of telescopic observations of it.
[...] Earth has yet to completely fall out of that zone of uncertainty. As a proportion of the remaining uncertainty, Earth is taking up more space, so for now, its odds are rising.
Think of it like a beam of light coming out of the front of that asteroid. That beam of light shrinks as we get to know its orbit better, but if Earth is yet to fall out of that beam, it takes up proportionally more space.
[...] Ars: What are we learning about the asteroid's destructive potential?
Andrews: The damage it could cause would be localized to a roughly city-sized area, so if it hits the middle of the ocean or a vast desert, nothing would happen. But it could trash a city, or completely destroy much of one, with a direct hit.
[...] Ars: So it's kind of late in the game to be planning an impact mission?
Andrews: This isn't an ideal situation. And humanity has never tried to stop an asteroid impact for real. I imagine that if 2024 YR4 does become an agreed-upon emergency, the DART team (JHUAPL + NASA, mostly) would join forces with SpaceX (and other space agencies, particularly ESA but probably others) to quickly build the right mass kinetic impactor (or impactors) and get ready for a deflection attempt close to 2028, when the asteroid makes its next Earth flyby. But yeah, eight years is not too much time.
A deflection could work! But it won't be as simple as just hitting the asteroid really hard in 2028.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.