NASA Asteroid 2024 YR4 'city killer' most likely to hit earth in agency history
NASA believes Asteroid 2024 YR4 is the most likely massive space object to hit Earth ever, making it a larger threat than previous threat "God of Chaos" 99942 Apophis
The "city killer" asteroid tipped to make direct path for Earth within the decade now has a higher risk of hitting the planet than any other in human history.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently moving in the opposite direction to our planet from its perch in the crab-shaped Constellation of Cancer. But NASA anticipates 100 metre wide chunk of rock will change course in the next few years and arrive back in the Earth's range by 2032, potentially hitting the planet and triggering an explosion akin to 500 atomic bombs.
NASA has repeatedly reappraised the probability rate assigned to YR4's chances of making planetfall within the next seven years, and until yesterday the rate was set at 2.6 percent - 0.1 percent below the highest in history. Less than a day after that rate was raised, however, the space agency has raised it once more, making it now the most likely recorded asteroid to hit the Earth.
The rate places its risk of collision above Asteroid 99942 Apophis, the "God of Chaos", discovered in 2004 that was given a 2.7 percent chance of hitting Earth by 2029. NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) officially raised the risk of collision in 2032 by 0.5 percent overnight to 3.1 percent.
The rate translates to a roughly one in 32 chance, meaning that, while it has been raised, it is still highly unlikely to hit the planet at all. The change was made after astronomers were able to make more detailed observations of the space object's potential trajectory, although it is still tens of thousands of miles away.
Should it hit the earth, scientists believe it could hit with the the potential energy release of 7.7 megatonnes of TNT, enough power to level a city. As well as predicting the potential timeline for YR4's possible collision, officials have also mapped out where the object could eventually land.
NASA believes the asteroid could hit anywhere in a large strip of land spanning thousands of miles, with potential collision zones including the Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, and Africa.