After alarming calculations, the risk that the 2024 YR4 asteroid hit the earth’s surface in 2032 have become close to zero. No scenarios at the “Don’t Look Up” or the “Armageddon”: the new observations conducted with the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory, have made it possible to exclude, almost totally, the possibility of an impact with the earth.
The 2024 YR4 asteroid and the risk of impact in 2032
In recent weeks, the celestial body had worried, and not a little, experts from all over the world, which initially had established a risk of record impact: 3.1% according to NASA and 2.8% according to ESA. A probability never reached for such a great asteroid that immediately triggered estimates on possible impact places and on the damage it would have caused. With a diameter between 40 and 90 meters, the 2024 YR4 asteroid is a so -called “city killer”, but luckily not a “planet killer”: a possible impact would not have caused the extinction of life on earth, but However, he would have razed one or more inhabited centers to the ground. Fortunately, as confirmed by the latest calculations on the trajectory of ASA (the European Space Agency), the percentage has gradually reduced, excluding any catastrophic scenario: now the risk of impact is 0.001%, or a possibility on 100 thousand of hit the earth.
The discovery and the first alarming calculations
Discovered in December, 2024 YR4 has an estimated diameter between 40 and 90 meters. The initial calculations of its trajectory indicated a risk of impact with the earth on December 22, 2032. Initially classified as level 3 on the NASA Turin impact risk scale, which goes from zero to ten, the asteroid has now been downgraded to the level zero, according to ESA. As explained by the agency, this is a “well -known behavior”, a “scheme” already seen in other observations concerning asteroids, in which the probability of an impact increases before descending quickly to zero with further analyzes.
In the coming months the 2024 YR4 trajectory will be followed by the James Webb Space Telescope: his orbit will take him far from the earth, until his return in 2028, the moment in which his path will be observed again. The last asteroid with dimensions greater than 30 meters that had worried scientists around the world had been Apophis. Identified in 2024, initially there was the risk that would hit the earth in 2029, before the probability would drop quickly to zero, a bit like 2024 YR4.
The risk for the moon
NASA and ESA have excluded an impact with the earth, but according to the US agency, there is still a small possibility that the asteroid affects the moon, always on December 22, 2032. At the moment the probability is 1.7 %, which is why 2024 YR4 still remains a “special observed”. However, scientists are working on countermeasures to be adopted to face similar threats and defend the planet: in 2022 NASA managed to deviate the trajectory of an harmless asteroid “hitting” it with a space vehicle.