An asteroid said to be the size of the Statue of Liberty could hit Earth in less than 10 years, with scientists forming a global defence plan. The 100-metre wide asteroid, referred to as 2024 YR4, was first seen by a telescope in Chile in December.
Space agency officials say there is a possibility it will smash into Earth in 2032, and it now tops impact risk lists. However, the odds of it actually striking the planet are very small, and it would not result in mass extinction, as with the asteroid that caused the end of the dinosaurs, which was up to 15km wide.
The chances of a strike are just over one per cent, reports the Mirror. Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Centre for Near Earth Object Studies, said: “We are not worried at all, because of this 99% chance it will miss. But it deserves attention.”
Catalina Sky Survey engineer David Rankin shared on social media: “This is one of the highest probabilities of an impact from a significantly sized rock ever. Most likely outcome is still a near miss.”
The discovery has alerted two global response groups endorsed by the United Nations – the International Asteroid Warning Network and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group.
Both would formulate a plan to intervene based on the chances of it hitting Earth, such as using a spacecraft to stop it. Its route will be closely monitored by some of the world’s most powerful telescopes. It will gradually disappear from view over the next few months, and will not be visible again for another three years.
The asteroid passed within around 500,000 miles of Earth on Christmas Day, about twice the distance to the Moon. Paul Chodas said scientists are examining surveys of the sky from 2016, when predictions show it was in close proximity then. If they successfully locate the asteroid in images, it should allow them to determine whether it will strike the planet or not.
He added: “If we don’t find that detection, the impact probability will just move slowly as we add more observations.”
Earth gets hit by an asteroid of similar size every few thousand years, each having potential to cause severe damage, according to the European Space Agency. The potential impact of this asteroid would be on December 22, 2032, but any idea of where it could land cannot be determined at this stage.
NASA said at this moment, no other large asteroids known to them have a higher than one per cent chance of striking the planet.
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