Deflecting Danger in 2032 from Asteroid 2024 YR4 | What Is It? What Can We Do? - Today In Space

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.

(00:05):
No doubt, at some point you'veheard in the last few months
that an asteroid 2024 yr fourhas the potential of impacting
Earth in 2032 but what can we doabout this? Are we doomed to the
same fate as the dinosaurs, orcan we actually do something
about it? Hello everyone, andwelcome to Today In Space. As
always, I'm your space sciencepodcast host from the East

(00:29):
Coast, Alex G orfanos, and intoday's episode, we're diving
into what's going on with thisnear Earth asteroid 2024, yr
four. It's captured thezeitgeist, and everyone's
talking about it. It's true thatthis asteroid has a non zero
chance of impacting Earth ondecember 22 2032 and as each day
passes, the percentages of theimpact have gone from one to two

(00:53):
to 3% back to down to one. It'sall over the place, or so it
seems. But it's going tocontinue to get more refined and
changed as we get closer toimpact. So what do we do in the
meantime? To us, we say, let'slearn. We need to science out of
this one, and we're going toexplore the idea of planetary
defense, the level of impact, ifthis asteroid actually does

(01:14):
impact Earth in 2032 and howlucky we are to have successful
missions like Dart and Hera tolean on for our Armageddon
moment. So strap in and let'sdive in to this week's episode.
Thanks for joining us.
Segment one. What is thisasteroid in part one, let's

(01:37):
break down what the asteroid is,its size and the potential
impact possible. There's stillso much about this asteroid that
we don't know. So you're gonnasee varying numbers, because
until we're able to get a goodview on it, we are just guessing
with a range of possibilities.But the estimated size ranges
from 130 to 328 feet, or 40 to100 meters wide, depending on

(01:59):
where you get it. Space.comreported it as 196 feet wide.
Gemini South data from thetelescope suggested that it's
177 feet wide. But until theJames Webb Space Telescope looks
at it in March of 2025 using itsinfrared instruments, expect
these estimates to continuechanging, and even afterwards,

(02:19):
the more data we get, the morerefined our estimates get, and
as far as its potential impact,you've probably heard of this
asteroid classified as a citykiller. The reason for that is
that the asteroid has thepotential, based on the range of
size and mass estimates, torelease the same energy as a
large nuclear bomb, or 7.7 to7.8 megatons of energy, the more

(02:43):
devastating result would be. Ifthe asteroid doesn't break up in
the atmosphere and impacts thesurface fully intact, but it
could easily break up intopieces, spreading out the impact
damage, but hitting more places.There's also the possibility of
another Tunguska event, which isan asteroid that actually blew
up in the atmosphere aboveTunguska in Russia, and it

(03:05):
flattened the entire woodlandarea from the pressure of that
event exploding. So regardless,it's something that would be
avoided if we can do that. Parttwo, how is it discovered? And
why does the probability keepchanging. Well, this is the
story of the humans and theautomated telescopes that
discovered this potentiallydangerous asteroid at the end of

(03:28):
2024 the asteroid was discoveredon december 27 2024 according to
our research, it was discoveredby the asteroid terrestrial
impact last alert system, orAtlas, which is a great name, a
NASA funded asteroid DiscoveryProgram. Now the Atlas team led
by astronomers like Larry de nothey are the team that did this,

(03:50):
but no one, no individual, wasactually credited with it, just
that the Atlas system wascredited with it. But there are
actual human beings behind it,running things behind the scene,
an atlas operates multipletelescopes that continuously
scan the sky for Near EarthObjects, and on December 27 of
2024 they captured the images of2024 yr four as it moved across

(04:12):
the sky. And the system uses 100and megapixel images processed
by computers in Honolulu toidentify star like objects that
move during the exposures thatthe telescope is taking, and
then you distinguish those fromthe fixed stars in the
background, really, really faraway. And this detection
occurred shortly after theasteroid made its closest

(04:33):
approach to Earth, which is whenit was bright enough to be
spotted by the reflectedsunlight. And so our planetary
defense today works that thisdiscovery was reported to the
Minor Planet Center inCambridge, Massachusetts, which
is apparently I didn't knowthis, the International
clearinghouse for small bodypositional measurements, marking
it as a new Near Earth Object,or Neo and then the automated

(04:57):
warning systems flag it becauseit's now. Something they found
that isn't a 0% chance ofimpacting that gets popped to
the top of NASA's century listand the European Space Agency's
risk list. And so it wasdiscovered, discovered on
december 27 and it made it tothat risk list by December 31,
of 2024 and then moreobservations happen from there.

(05:18):
Once it hit that list, morediscoveries, more astronomers
worldwide were contributing tothe data using telescopes like
the Magdalena Ridge Observatoryin New Mexico, the Danish
telescope, the Very LargeTelescope in Chile, and later
the Gemini South telescope inthe Chile and Andes. So while
the news and rumors can make youthink that no one is doing
anything, there's actually a lotof unnamed people in science who

(05:41):
are keeping an eye on this whilewe all go about our lives and
sleep at night. So why does theprobability keep changing? Well,
think about what we know aboutthis new object. It has an
unknown orbit, which is a nonperfect circle, most likely, and
we only have roughly two monthsof data on it at this point, so
we only know this much of thecircle that is this orbit. And

(06:03):
you can fit a lot of differentcircles and trajectories on just
that little bit of data, thatlittle part of the line of the
full circle, that's the truepath. So while we still don't
know a lot about the mass andthe size of the rotation and and
we still don't know a lot aboutthe mass and size its rotation,
the makeup of the object whichis going to have a big impact on

(06:23):
that circular orbit. We alsoonly saw it because it was close
enough to Earth that the sunreflected it off the asteroid,
and an automated telescopesystem noticed it. And now that
it's past Earth, we don't expectto be able to see it that well
with regular telescopes. TheJames Webb Space Telescope is
good at finding dust andanything with heat with
infrared, so that will be ourbest tool to know more way

(06:43):
before 2032 and my mind goes tothinking about the people who
had their James Webb SpaceTelescope observations pushed in
March of this year so that we ashumanity could get more info
about this city killer asteroidwhile it's still close. And you
know, does the whole list ofplanned observations for JWST
now shift, or does one group getpushed to the back of the queue?

(07:08):
Let's just chalk it up to thingsthat I would like to know. So if
there's anyone on the James WestSpace Telescope team, or someone
who's had their researchpostponed, hit me up, because I
find that stuff fascinating. Andwhile a lot of experts were
emphasizing, you know, it's a96.9% chance of a miss. It's
still too high, in my opinion,to just brush it off. And I
think the public interest isvalid. And so the probability is

(07:30):
fluctuated from 1% 3.1% backdown to 1.5% and now below 1% so
while annoying and kind ofanxiety inducing, that's
actually pretty common,apparently, but not something
that we should just brush it offand say it's not a problem.
Another reason why I think it'spremature for experts and
scientists to just say, Don'tworry about it. It's 99.9% not

(07:52):
going to happen. That may betrue for the Earth impact, but
the more data that we seem to begetting in this early stage, the
more the zone moves away fromhitting Earth and closer to
hitting the moon. And while wemight not have to worry about
life being impacted on thatimpact disturbing the delicate

(08:14):
balance we have with our tidesthat are pulled by the moon if
we're if this asteroid can knockthe moon off course, then we've
got another problem on ourhands. That may not be
Armageddon, but is not good forthe future of humanity, if we
just brush it away and say it'snot going to happen. Part three,

(08:35):
what can we actually do aboutit? It's a lot, actually,
especially as humanity and yes,even those of us without
astronomical tools or NASA orESA badges can do stuff too.
We'll get to that in a sec, butfirst what we globally need to
do is learn as much as possibleabout the object, its orbit, its
attitude, what it's made of, andits true size and shape. The

(08:57):
astronomers James Webb SpaceTelescope team and NASA sentry
and ESA will do this for us,because that's what they're paid
to do as citizens of Earth. Wecan keep talking about it. If
you ask me, this is a great timeto discuss the importance of a
better system in place. Findinga way to add more and more
automated detection systems onEarth and in orbit seem critical

(09:18):
to me, the faster we findsomething that comes remotely
close to Earth or is just notcataloged, the better we are. We
don't need to build somethingexpensive either. In fact, with
the amount of these probes thatwe might need to have this net
of automated observations acrossthe solar system, we might be

(09:38):
better off with smaller, lessexpensive drones, instead of
state of the art completelycustomized for Max science
spacecraft like James Webb SpaceTelescope. The more we talk
about this as citizens, the morelikely the discussion happens at
the higher levels. Then thingsget prioritized from a political

(09:59):
standpoint. Point in the USCongress has the purse, right?
So if you're a US citizen, callyour congress people and tell
them you want NASA to get moremoney to work on planetary
defense, put some of thetaxpayer money towards building
that system that will then makejobs and get people more
employed, actually making thesedefense drones protecting Earth.

(10:21):
Another thing you can do is staycurious and excited about this.
Don't let headline of somethinglike an asteroid impact make you
apathetic to life and getdepressed. Listen to this
podcast. We'll be here coveringthis through 2032 and
you know, we'll keep askingquestions and looking for
answers. That might be thesimplest thing you can do. And

(10:42):
you might be saying, okay, Alex,that's great, but what are we
actually going to do about this?Why? How do we actually stop the
asteroid? You can watch it allyou want, but why don't we just
nuke this thing like anArmageddon? Funny, you should
ask. Let's talk about the Dartmission, real mission that
successfully changed the orbitof an asteroid for the first
time in human history. TheNASA's Dart mission was a real
world example of a kineticimpactor, or the sciency version

(11:05):
of smashing a smaller mass intoa larger mass to make the bigger
thing move. We covered thismission at the time go to
Episode To learn more, but thedouble asteroid redirection test
involved sending a spacecraft todeliberately crash into the
smaller body of the binaryasteroid system Didymos. Its
mission was to change velocityjust enough that, over time, its

(11:27):
orbits shift away from the otherobject. We found out that we can
use a small kinetic impactor toslightly nudge a dangerous
asteroid years ahead of time inorder to change its orbit enough
to prevent a collision coursewith Earth. The cool thing about
Dart and something we can lookforward to from now until 2032

(11:47):
is the European Space Agency'sHera mission, which is going to
which is going back to that samesystem that Dart hit, to observe
the aftermath. Hera is designedto provide scientists with
critical data about theresulting changes in the
asteroid structure and motion,basically the real results of
what Dart did to the orbit ofDidymos. You can theorize and

(12:09):
simulate all day, but theresults in reality tell you how
it is. And so much more thanjust simulation alone, this
complementary mission is reallyspecial and extremely well
timed, because we've only everchanged the orbit of an asteroid
once at this point in real life,and not in the movies. And
another successful mission tosee how well we did is really

(12:30):
essential if we're going to doit for real with real stakes.
Part Four, why don't we justnuke it? Armageddon style, the
method most people go for withlife ending asteroid impacts is
the classic Armageddon approach,just like the movie, let's just
nuke it, even though there's alot of truth to setting up oil
riggers to drill into themetallic asteroid to drop the

(12:51):
nuke, and how tough that wouldactually be to do that the
asteroid is in that scenario isnow just split in half with a
ton of debris, and could Justcome right back at Earth again.
So you made more debris you needto keep track of, and now you
have two massive pieces you needto deal with later, assuming

(13:11):
that it is going to keeporbiting and make its way back
again. So did you really solveanything by doing that, or did
you just make a lot of mess anddelay the problem. That's why we
like the kinetic impactormethod. The sooner you're able
to tap the asteroid in itsorbit, the less force and mass
you need to nudge it away theway you want it to. So if you

(13:32):
make a system that is largeenough to see potential impact
asteroids ahead of time, youcould add a ton of small drone
kinetic impactors send out tonudge orbits years ahead of
time. And this would be abeautiful game of moving the
pieces on the Solar System gameboard and managing orbits

(13:53):
without adding a bunch of messto the whole equation, because
otherwise the nuclear optionmight save you once, but after a
while, those massive things thathave broken apart start
impacting other orbits, and theneven your nuclear option won't
work because you've run out ofnukes. If there's a lot of them,
or you don't have a nukepowerful enough to move it the

(14:14):
next time around, it's really alast ditch effort, and we're
saying we should invest in abetter system now, so that you
don't ever need to strap a nukeon a space shuttle and then
sacrifice a crew member just toget it to work. So to close up,
asteroid 2024, yr four is one ofthe newly detected asteroids
that has the best chance ofhitting Earth and impacting

(14:37):
lives than we've ever detected.At this point, it makes the idea
of planetary defense and thepotential of an extinction event
from outer space real to morepeople than ever before. While
there are a lot of people whosee it as inevitable, we showed
you today that actually lots ofpeople around the world are
taking this very seriously, andwe also shared that what we know

(14:59):
about it so far. And that evenin the worst case scenario, it's
not going to end all life onEarth if we are unable to stop
it. But we also reviewed can bedone today, since we have
kinetic impactors like the Dartmission to redirect asteroids,
and we have the HERA mission tolook forward to so we can learn
more about the effectiveness ofhumanity's first attempt at

(15:21):
redirecting an asteroid's orbit.No new technology needs to be
discovered in order for us tomake a difference, you don't
have to be a scientist or workat NASA or ESA to make a
difference in the US. You cancall up your congress people to
tell them to help fund NASAprojects for planetary defense,
because those are the peoplegiving NASA taxpayer money to

(15:43):
fund these projects, and if theUS leads, then organizations
around the world like ESA willput whatever they can towards
the effort, and we can worktogether to save humanity. So
fear not fellow humans. We canactually science the shit out of
this one. It just takes steppingaway from the headlines just a
bit and looking a little bitdeeper into what organizations

(16:03):
like NASA ESA and teams ofastronomers are doing behind the
scenes, and of course, you canalways count on Today In Space
to cover stuff like this. Sothank you for joining us in
Today In Space. If you'veenjoyed this episode, please
like subscribe. Leave yourthoughts in the comments below.
We'd love to hear from you. Wehave all the links for the
research for this episode, youcan go check them out in the
description below. This is AlexG orfano signing off and hoping

(16:28):
you spread love and spreadscience. Be safe, stay focused
and be well see you next timeyou

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Deflecting Danger in 2032 from Asteroid 2024 YR4 | What Is It? What Can We Do?

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