Bhubaneswar: The debate on hit or miss ended when NASA has significantly lowered the risk of near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 as an impact threat to Earth for the foreseeable future.
In its latest observation, NASA said, “When first discovered, asteroid 2024 YR4 had a very small, but notable chance of impacting our planet in 2032. As observations of the asteroid continued to be submitted to the Minor Planet Center, experts at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL’s) Center for Near-Earth Object Studies were able to calculate more precise models of the asteroid’s trajectory and now have updated its impact probability on Dec. 22, 2032 to only 0.004% and found there is no significant potential for this asteroid to impact our planet for the next century.”
The NASA report added that the latest observations have further reduced the uncertaintyregarding its future trajectory, and the range of possible locations (which included South Asia, including India) the asteroid could have hit on Dec. 22, 2032, as it will be moving farther away from the Earth.
MOON NOT SAFE!
The NASA report, however, added that there still remains a very small chance for asteroid 2024 YR4 impacting the Moon on Dec. 22, 2032. That probability is currently 1.7%.
The report then added that NASA will continue to observe asteroid 2024 YR4 with observatories funded by its Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will observe the asteroid in March to further gain insights about its size for scientific purposes.
MOON’S TRYST WITH ASTEROIDS
As per a report published in Nature Communications recently, a massive asteroid has banged on to Moon some 3.8 billion years ago. The asteroid strike at Moon then had shot out debris. NASA’s Artemis astronauts will land on Moon in 2027, where they will collect rocks from the south pole – Aitken basin, the largest and oldest visible basin on the moon. The basin size is 2500km
WHEN MOON THROWS STONES…
As per report in Astrophysical Journal in 2024, researchers have collected 2024 PT5, a small-near earth object or asteroid, being of local origin.
The research report added that It appears to be composed of rock broken off from the Moon’s surface and ejected into space after a large impact.
As per Teddy Kerata, lead researcher of the team,
“We had a general idea that this asteroid may have come from the Moon, but the smoking gun was when we found out that it was rich in silicate minerals — not the kind that are seen on asteroids but those that have been found in lunar rock samples.”
The research report further added that “It looks like it hasn’t been in space for very long, maybe just a few thousand years or so, as there’s a lack of space weathering that would have caused its spectrum to redden.”
The Moon origin asteroid was first detected on August 7, 2024 by NASA’s ATLAS (Asteroid Terresterial-impact Last alert System) at Sutherland, South Africa.
The team led by Teddy Kerata then used observations from the Lowell Discovery Telescope and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawai to show that the spectrum of reflected sunlight from the small object’s surface didn’t match that of any known asteroid type; instead, the reflected light more closely matched rock from the Moon.
2024YR4 TRACKING TREASURE FOR SCIENTISTS
The NASA release states that while this asteroid no longer poses a significant impact hazard to Earth, the asteroid 2024 YR4 provided an invaluable opportunity for experts at NASA and its partner institutions to test planetary defense science and notification processes.
