Re: "New asteroid has a chance of impacting Earth in 2032"

On 1/30/2025 3:03 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

"New asteroid has a chance of impacting Earth in 2032"
    https://www.chron.com/news/space/article/asteroid-hit- earth-20063120.php
 “The odds of a recently discovered massive asteroid hitting Earth within the next seven years are shockingly not zero. Dubbed 2024 YR4, the approximately 150-foot-wide asteroid was first spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on Dec. 27, 2024. Based on preliminary data, the near-Earth object (NEO) has a 1.2 percent chance of crashing into our planet when it makes a very close approach on Dec. 22, 2032, landing it at the top of NASA's Sentry Risk Table and the European Space Agency's (ESA) NEO Impact Risk List.”
 Don't look up !
 Lynn
 

Its a lot smaller the Dimorphos, the asteroid hit in the DART mission.
That was over 150 meters across.
BOTE doodling....
The DART impact changed Dimorphos' velocity by about 2.7 mm/s
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05878-z
Guess: This asteroid is 1/3 the diameter, ie 1/27
the volume, and 1/27 the mass.
A similar impact would change its velocity by 72.9 mm/s
That's 262 meters/hour, or 6.2 km/day, or 2300 km/y
Earth's radius is about 3963 km.
So, even if it were precisely centered on the Earth,
a DART sized impact could make it miss in about 16
months.
So, it probably won't be done, but doing something is
actually kind of feasible.
There's a good chance a DART style impact would entirely
disrupt this small asteroid.
pt