This Asteroid Will Miss The Earth, But May Hit Our Moon, NASA Calculations Show

An asteroid that has been grabbing a lot of attention, was first expected to hit the Earth, with its chances of actually crashing on our planet at one time calculated at around 20%. However, further analysis dropped that rate to 3.1% to 1.5% and now it is at near zero - US space agency NASA says actual probability, 0.004%.

However, even as the chances of this space rock, dubbed A\steroid 2024 YR4, hitting the Earth diminished and then vanished, the risk it posed to our moon actually increased. Therefore, from virtually no chance of the asteroid crashing into the moon, the risk factor now is around 1.7%. The date of the closest approach to Earth and Moon has been calculated to be in Dec. 2032 by NASA.

That asteroids have been hitting the moon for ages. All you have to do is look at its pock-marked face. The same has been happening to Earth, but all major signs of these asteroid collisions have weathered out and vanished. However, on the moon, there is nothing to wear out these traces and therefore, we can see all the asteroid craters.

But the last has definitely not been written about this infamous asteroid. NASA will get its biggest telescope out in space, the James Webb Space Telescope to zoom in on the space rock and analyse it minutely in March. More will be revealed about its make-up as well as its direction.

Not just that, since the asteroid is anywhere between 130 feet to 300 feet, and it will come very close to earth in 2032, when human scientific ability is even better than it is now, the asteroid will present a great opportunity to carry out experiments and not just watch it fly by at close range.

Information gathering from such close quarters will definitely reveal some important details about the nature of our solar system as well as its evolution over billions of years since such space rocks may be as old as when the solar system was forming.