Asteroid 2024 YR4 Chance Of Hitting Earth Could Have Risen to 20%! Check Scary Claim
The scary Asteroid 2024 YR4 is no longer expected to crash into Earth, but the chances of it hitting the Moon have increased to as high as 1.7% now.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 has generated a huge scare and justifiably so considering that it was expected to hit the Earth, even if it was out there in the year Dec. 2032. And that scare and panic was generated by the claim that it had just about 3.1% chance of hitting Earth. However, now there is a claim that has been made, which says the actual chances of this asteroid crashing into our planet were, at one time, considered likely to climb up to a terrifying double-digits. Yes, you read that right!
According to the Telegraph, projections by astronomers at one time had indicated that the chances of this asteroid hitting Earth could have jumped as high as 20%. However, that did not come to pass.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 is a mammoth space rock travelling at humongous speed. It is estimated be about 40 – 90 meters across. If it crashed onto Earth, it would destroy an area equivalent of about 3000 feet. In a barren landscape, a crash of that nature would leave the Earth shaken and stirred. However, were it to crash in a populated city, the human casualty figures could have been in thousands or more.
So big was the scare, even in NASA that it had become the single biggest threat from an asteroid on the space agency's automated Sentry risk list, which consists of finding out how likely any Near Earth Object (NEOs) is likely to collide with Earth.
However, now, there is a near-zero chance of Asteroid 2024 YR4 crashing onto Earth and it has even been removed from the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, where it has reached a score of 3, which is quite rare for an asteroid. Now, it has been reassigned as zero.
The actual chance of the asteroid crashing into Earth have decreased to just 0.005 percent now.
NASA and other space agencies like the ESA had deployed a number of their technologies to track the asteroid. This included the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. And NASA says it will continue to observe asteroid 2024 YR4 with observatories linked to he Planetary Defense Coordination Office. And importantly, even NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will be deployed to keep an eye on it.
