If an asteroid is on a collision course with the moon, what should humanity do? Try to nudge the space rock out of the way before it strikes? Obliterate it with a nuclear explosion?
Those are the questions explored in a recent paper from more than a dozen researchers, including several NASA scientists. And they're not purely hypothetical: An asteroid known as 2024 YR4 is estimated to have a 4% chance of hitting the moon in 2032. Such a cosmic collision could produce debris “up to 1,000 times above background levels over just a few days, possibly threatening astronauts and spacecraft” in low-Earth orbit, the researchers wrote in the paper, which was uploaded to the preprint website arXiv on Sept. 15 but has yet to be peer-reviewed.
To avoid creating that potentially dangerous debris field, one option is to nuke the asteroid, according to the paper — or trigger what the scientists call a “robust disruption” — before it reaches the moon.
Cue the "Armageddon" movie references.
But using a nuclear explosion to destroy an asteroid has never been tested, so the plan would come with a slew of major risks.
Various key characteristics about asteroid 2024 YR4 aren’t known, including its mass, which would be critical in figuring out how to properly “disrupt” it without creating more problems.
“If the explosion is not enough, you’re just going to create a debris field anyway,” said Julie Brisset, interim director of the Florida Space Institute, who wasn’t involved with the paper.Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station in Chile in December. NASA estimates that it measures up to 220 feet across, large enough to be considered a “city killer” because it could be capable of causing severe damage to a city or region on Earth.
Experts initially thought there was a small chance the asteroid could hit our planet, and the probability of such an impact was estimated to be as high as 3% earlier this year. But a collision with Earth was later ruled out.
With Earth now thought to be in the clear, asteroid 2024 YR4 has an estimated 4.3% chance of smacking into the moon.
The authors of the recent paper suggested launching a mission to conduct reconnaissance of the asteroid, including estimating its mass from up close. After that, they proposed, an explosive device could be built, then deployed to the space rock.source
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