The 2024 YR4 asteroid is between 40 and 100 metres wide. Photo / 123rf
The 2024 YR4 asteroid is between 40 and 100 metres wide. Photo / 123rf
An asteroid the width of a full-size football pitch could hit Earth in seven years, astronomers have warned.
A space rock between 40 and 100m wide was spotted on Christmas Day by a telescope in Chile, in South America, which specialises in identifying objects in space that could collide with our planet.
Analysis of the rock and its flight revealed it is moving away from Earth at around 38,000mph but its orbit will bring it into close proximity around Christmas 2032.
Official estimates state there is around a 1.2% chance of the asteroid, codenamed 2024 YR4, hitting Earth at 5.25am on Wednesday, December 22, 2032.
It is believed to be the highest risk of an asteroid collision ever recorded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Christmas asteroid was placed immediately atop the official “asteroid risk list”.
The second-highest risk has just a 0.68% chance of hitting Earth. Astronomers have rated the threat of the new asteroid as being a level three on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, which measures how concerned we should be about an asteroid hitting Earth. This is the highest level for any asteroid currently being monitored and two international organisations are now assessing what to do about it.
More observations of the asteroid from telescopes across the world will try to get a more accurate idea of its trajectory before it disappears from sight, to determine if there is a viable threat of a collision with our planet.
ESA said that it was not currently possible to determine where the asteroid would hit if it was to crash into Earth.
An asteroid of this size collides with Earth every few thousand years and would be of sufficient size and speed to cause loss of life and severe damage to property.
The International Asteroid Warning Network and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group had been activated and were considering what actions may be needed, the space agency said.
This could involve producing a model to understand what the full extent of the impact could be, and also how to move it off course to prevent a collision.
And while in the eyes of Hollywood a nuclear bomb is the only way to deal with a meteorite heading for Earth, there are less drastic options too.
Data shows that crashing a sacrificial spacecraft into an asteroid would be powerful enough to move any asteroid smaller than 1km in diameter – such as 2024 YR4 – off course and to avert catastrophe.
Nasa’s recent Dart mission trialled this technology on the asteroid Dimorphos and showed flying into a space rock can change its trajectory by more than previously expected.
Nuclear warheads could be flown into asteroids bigger than 1km across to save Earth, experts say, but these are exceptionally rare.
A rock this big is expected to hit our planet once every 700,000 years and would create a crater as big as Manchester.
An impact of this size would cause global devastation and the possible collapse of civilisation, experts say.
“A kinetic impactor, a spacecraft, will be a lot more precise [than a nuclear bomb] because you can select the mass, the velocity and the direction of the impact; you can really control the deflection,” Ian Carnelli, a planetary defence expert at the ESA, told The Telegraph in 2023.
The asteroid’s path projected by The International Asteroid Warning Network Photo / NASA/JPL
“However, it is a lot more complex with a nuclear device, and that is before you get into the political discussion because nuclear explosions in space are banned by UN treaties.
“But even so, the nuclear device is not like you see in Armageddon where you send drillers to put the bomb in the core of the asteroid and destroy it, the idea is to detonate it at a certain distance from the asteroid.
“Triggering an explosion a certain distance away from an asteroid is extremely complex and nobody would agree to test it before a real threat is identified so you really would have a total lack of knowledge of how to do it.
“Whereas the kinetic impactor is a proven technique and the technology is ready now and it is much more controllable. It’s really the ideal deflection technique.”
A kinetic impactor would be a spacecraft, he said, of around two tonnes in mass equipped with just solar panels, a camera and a navigation camera. Launching this from a rocket into an asteroid is easier, safer and quicker to do than launching a nuclear bomb, Carnelli said.
“We are expanding the range of applicability of the kinetic impactor and that’s very good for the community because we know more than 95% of the kilometre-sized asteroids and we know that none of those pose a threat to the Earth,” he added.
