Dear MEL Topic Readers,
A newly discovered asteroid has a slim chance of hitting Earth in 2032
Until December 27 last year, there had not been any known large asteroids that have a 1% or higher chance of hitting our planet. But a telescope located in north-central Chili first spotted an asteroid that is 40 to 100 meters wide. Space agencies calculated that the asteroid, named 2024 YR4, has a 1.2% chance of hitting the Earth on December 22, 2032. If it ever hit our planet, the impact could produce blast damage as far as 50 km from the impact site. Since the asteroid is traveling away from the Earth for now, no further information or data is available until it returns to Earth’s vicinity in 2028. Is there any space defense system against incoming asteroids? In 2022, NASA carried out the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission to assess the effectiveness of asteroid deflection technology by crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid at high speed to change the course of a celestial object. Another mitigation tactic is to evacuate people, animals, and things from potentially impacted regions. How about destroying an asteroid by nuclear bombs like the 1998 movie “Armageddon”?
Read the article and learn about an asteroid that will come very close to our planet in 2032.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/31/science/asteroid-2024-yr4-earth-impact-chance/index.html
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