Long-time VICE readers might remember how I chronicled every one of Asteroid 2024 YR4’s moves. You might better remember it as the asteroid that definitely looked like it was going to smash into us… until it didn’t.
Well, now it looks like it’s going to hit the moon, which presents its own set of problems.
Once thought to have a 3 percent chance of hitting Earth, it now has a 4 percent chance of hitting the moon in December 2032. That would still impact us here on Earth. It would disrupt our satellite infrastructure and potentially launch off all kinds of lunar debris that we don’t have the space defenses to deal with, according to a new research paper published in arXiv.
Letting it smash into the moon could create a debris cloud that could pelt Earth’s orbit with micrometeoroids up to 1,000 times the normal rate. Satellites, space stations, and astronauts would be in for a heck of a time, meaning that probably isn’t the best option.
To prevent that, scientists are weighing two options: deflect it or destroy it. The first is more elegant. Just nudge it off-course. Launch something into space with the specific intent of crashing it into the orbit to knock it off course.
The problem is, we need to know its mass, which currently ranges somewhere between 51 and 711 million kg. That’s a big gap that leaves plenty of room for imprecision in a process that requires utmost precision. We could end up accidentally pushing it more toward the Earth than away from it.
A scouting mission to measure the asteroid more precisely is possible, but the window for that mission would be tight. Designing a spacecraft scratch for that could happen in 2028 is doable but risky. NASA could, conceivably, retrofit the materials of an already launched mission, such as OSIRIS-APEX or Psyche, but that would mean abandoning current projects.
NASA Says Nuking an Asteroid Might Be the Only Way to Save the Moon
If deflection isn’t an option, or doesn’t pan out, we can blow it to bits by slamming a big, fast thing into it. But this thing would be so big and so fast that it would destroy itself. But, of course, destroying it means turning one significant threat into thousands of smaller ones that hopefully blow right past us and set right at us.
And then there’s the literal nuclear option. That one will require detonating a one megaton bomb near the asteroid that could either leave it in fragments or completely vaporize it. If you’re imagining Bruce Willis and a ragtag group of oil rig roughnecks writing an asteroid as it tears through space, then you’re going to be severely disappointed by the reality of it.
And that reality wouldn’t even be far removed from things we’ve already done. The United States has already tested what it would be like if a nuke were set off in space, when it conducted five desperate high-altitude nuclear detonations back in the early 1960s.
But it’s been a long time since we’ve had to do that again. Hope we’re not rusty should it come to that.
All of this depends on what we discover about Asteroid 2024 YR4’s trajectory between now and 2028. Do we just let the moon take a bullet for us, even if that would still force us to deal with all sorts of repercussions that we may not be prepared for? Do we deflect it, or do we nuke it before it becomes a significant problem?
No one knows. But we do have options.
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