Scientists have increased the risk that the 196ft-wide 2024 YR asteroid could smash into Earth to 1-in-43 – and there’s some more bad news to go with it
Boffins have warned we may not be able to stop a giant asteroid strike hitting Earth in seven years.
We told how scientists had increased the risk that 196ft-wide 2024 YR4 could smash into Earth to 1-in-43, a jump of 1% to 2.3%. Nasa have also made a decision on the asteroid hurtling through space.
But eggheads have now revealed that there is not enough time to build an asteroid deflection mission by the impact date of December 22, 2032.
Dr Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist and author based in London, said: “You need 10 years or more to build, plan, and execute an asteroid deflection mission.
“We have less than eight years to potentially deal with it. We don’t have much time.”
Consequences of the catastrophic event range from earthquakes and tsunamis to an “impact winter” and the wipe out of all humankind.
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022 and destroyed it after a ten month mission.
But Dr Andrews said we may not be able to stop 2024 YR4, thought to be the size of the Statue of Liberty, in a similar way.
He added: “So much could go wrong if we try and hit it with something like DART. Nobody wants to accidentally ‘disrupt’ an asteroid, because those components can still head for Earth.
“With only a few years down the line, we could accidentally deflect it – but not enough to make it avoid the planet. Then, it still hits Earth, just somewhere else that wasn’t going to be hit.”
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