Where is Bruce Willis when you need him?
Apparently, a 55-metre wide asteroid may be about to smack into our moon, and Nasa is thinking about blowing it up with a nuclear weapon before it does.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered in December 2024 and became briefly famous when scientists predicted it had a 3.1% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. However, further observations reduced the asteroid's chances of colliding with Earth to 0.28%.
However, scientists now have put the chances of the "city-killer" asteroid hitting the Moon at 4% - a fairly high chance, relatively speaking.
This is bad news as the impact would kick up a long tail of debris in our area of space, which would play havoc on our satellites and space missions.
Nasa is looking at several options, like crashing a probe into the asteroid to nudge it off course, but that plan was later deemed "impractical" because of constraints such as not knowing the object's mass, and having a very limited window to study the object further before its close flyby in 2032.
Another idea Nasa is looking at is to simply nuke the bloody thing, but scientists say more research is needed before taking this forward as an option.
The nuclear option is also untested but theoretically possible, with a possible launch time between late 2029 and late 2031, according to researchers.
Scientists stress that there's still a 96% chance that asteroid 2024 Y4 breezes by the Moon with no issues, but the researchers say this situation is an opportunity to further research asteroid-smashing spacecraft.
Reference
