One idea proposed to deal with asteroids that are likely to hit the moon in 2032? Just make that the core.
In a plan that ripped straight from the script for the 1998 film Armageddon, the scientists proposed a simple, if any, intense way to deal with nasty asteroids.
Just make that the core.
However, in this case, it is not Earth that is the celestial body under threat. And this plan definitely doesn’t have to send Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck on a tragic journey into space rock itself.
Instead, a team of researchers, including NASA scientists, have announced their bold idea of firing a nuclear bomb in 2032 on an asteroid with a slight chance of hitting the moon.
The asteroid in question may be familiar to you. Called the 2024 YR4, Spacelock, large enough to level the city, grabbed the headlines in early 2025 when it historically increased the likelihood of hitting the Earth.
This is something you need to know about the 2024 YR4 review and new nuclear options.
What is Asteroid 2024 yr4? Does it pose a threat to the planet?
Asteroid 2024 YR4 became an alarm source, as it was rarely high risk of colliding with Earth on December 22, 2024, as it was large enough to be considered a “city murderer.”
Spacelock was reported on December 27, 2024 to the Minor Planet Center, the official authority to observe and report new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. The object ultimately attracted the attention of NASA and other astronomers. This has risen on the US Space Agency’s Sentry Impact Risk Table.
For a while, it was the only object among over 37,000 known large space rocks, and could soon collide with Earth.
It began to change in late February as more accurate observations allowed scientists to effectively lower the chances of an asteroid’s impact to a very low number.
Asteroid 2024 How big is yr4?
Based on observations from James Webb Space Telescope, scientists know that an asteroid’s approximate length can reach nearly 300 feet or the size of a 10-storey building.
Safe from YR4 asteroids, but the lunar impact odds continue to rise
Earth may no longer be at risk of a terrible collision with an asteroid, but the moon is not so lucky.
Webb’s initial observations in March could have hit a month, increasing from a 1.7% figure calculated in February to 3.8%, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Research Center, which tracks asteroid-like objects at NASA’s California Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
These odds rose again to 4.3% after Webb’s latest observations were made in May. According to NASA, the data helped scientists to better understand where the asteroid is on December 22, 2032.
What happens if an asteroid hits the moon?
If our universe’s neighbors were hit by such a blow from an asteroid of that size, NASA ensured that the orbit of the moon around Earth would not change.
But in a new paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed, a team of researchers, including NASA scientists, claims that the effects of the moon of that size could kick fragments that threaten Earth’s satellites and even astronauts on the International Space Station.
Scientists propose to blow up asteroids with nuclear weapons
So researchers have made many plans for scientists to prevent conflicts. The most extreme is firing a large number of nuclei at an asteroid.
Scientists may know the approximate size of an asteroid, but there is no exact approximation of the asteroid’s weight. Considering that, researchers argue that world space agencies cannot pull off reconnaissance missions to collect data and then build spacecraft with the specifications necessary to successfully crash and knock an asteroid from its current orbit.
Such a plan poses additional risks, researchers argue, that it involves inadvertently pushing the asteroid into a collision course with Earth.
However, firing a nuclear arsenal on an asteroid requires no subtlety or nuance.
Therefore, the researchers argued that using “nuclear explosion devices” to detonate space rocks is a sufficient way to deal with the smallest threats.
The team concluded that the mission should begin between 2029 and late 2031 and late 2031.
This paper was uploaded to Arxiv, the preprint research repository, on September 15th.
NASA is already tweaking asteroids in DART tests
If an asteroid needs to be repurposed from its collision course with Earth, future planetary defense missions may well be similar to the test that retreated three years ago.
In September 2022, the US Space Agency showed that it is possible to drive incoming asteroids off the harmless path by slamming a spacecraft into one as part of a double asthma redirect test (DART).
Released in November 2021, DART traveled for over 10 months before crashing into Dimorphos at around 14,000 mph. While the small asteroid poses no threat to Earth, NASA was trying to test how it could redirect orbital paths that threaten objects towards Earth.
As of October 2024, let’s take a good look at the remnants of the asteroids of the European Space Agency crafts.
Hera was released on October 7th on a two-year journey to Dimorphos from Cape Canaveral Space Force in Florida.
According to the agency, the spacecraft is expected to enter orbit of the DidyMos binary system in October 2026. Authorities hope that by analyzing the results of NASA’s experiments, the space agency will be in a better position to repeat its piloting.
Eric Lagatta is a Space Connect reporter for the USA Today Network. Contact him at elagatta@gannett.com
