When I last wrote about recently discovered Asteroid 2024 YR4, the odds of it actually impacting the Earth on Dec 22, 2032, had increased from an initial 1.2% in late January to 2.2% as of Feb 7. In the latest update from NASA as report by the Daily Express US, those odds have now increased yet again to 3.1%, substantially higher than the previous all-time high of 2.7% estimated for Apophis’ visit on Apr 13, 2029.
But unlike that earlier scare with Apophis, when its odds of colliding with Earth quickly reduced to near zero after a few more weeks of observations to more accurately determine its future trajectory, 2024 YR4 (when are they going to give this space rock a real name we can relate to?) still seems to be moving in the opposite direction.
While it’s perfectly natural for these estimated odds of a collision to fluctuate both up and down as additional observations help refine its orbital dynamics, and it’s still more likely than not that those odds will also reduce to near zero before it disappears from our ability to directly observe it sometime in April, until it actually does so it will remain a cause for some concern.
Indeed, if those odds aren’t well under 1% by April, both the US and China will need to give serious thought to an intercept mission in 2028 (when it’s next in our neighborhood) to see if we can either nudge it into a safer orbit or even blow it up with a nuke into small enough fragments that they would all burn up harmlessly in our atmosphere. OTOH, since the potential impact risk corridor does not include any US territory, and since America First, Last, and Only Trump will presumably still be in office then, it will probably be left to China to mount such an effort if one is actually needed.
And speaking of that risk corridor, it also has been further refined as reported in the independent and illustrated above, so we have a better sense of just which urban centers might be at greatest risk. And once again it’s not good news. The previous risk corridor had it further south in Africa and overflying a much larger portion of the Arabian Sea (NW Indian Ocean) before reaching India so it was more of a 50-50 proposition as to whether it would strike land or water.
Now that the risk corridor has shifted north, it’s about twice as likely that it would strike land rather than a presumably less harmful impact in the ocean. Even worse, some of the largest cities in South America, Africa, and Asia are now in the potential crosshairs of this cosmic cannonball.
These include Bogota in Columbia, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Accra in Ghana, Lome in Togo, Lagos and Abuja in Nigeria, N’Djamena in Chad, Khartoum in Sudan, Asmara in Eritrea, Sana’a in Yemen, Mumbai and Kolkata in India, and Dhaka in Bangladesh. Other countries at risk appear to include Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, Liberia, Benin, Cameroon, Oman, and Myanmar.
Hopefully I’ll have better news to report in the next update, so stay tuned.
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Update: I’ve edited the opening paragraph to include the latest (Feb 18) data, and I’m including a table of how the impact probability has evolved over time since its initial discovery:
2024 YR4 Impact Probability over Time
| Date |
Total
Observations
|
ProbaBILITY
of Impact
|
| Dec 31 |
| Jan 11 |
| Jan 20 |
| Jan 22 |
| Jan 23 |
| Jan 27 |
| Jan 30 |
| Jan 31 |
| Feb 1 |
| Feb 2 |
| Feb 3 |
| Feb 4 |
| Feb 5 |
| Feb 6 |
| Feb 7 |
| Feb 8 |
| Feb 10 |
| Feb 14 |
| Feb 17 |
| Feb 18 |
|
| 71 |
| 170 |
| 198 |
| 213 |
| 219 |
| 238 |
| 261 |
| 276 |
| 284 |
| 289 |
| 292 |
| 294 |
| 307 |
| 315 |
| 325 |
| 336 |
| 347 |
| 354 |
| 368 |
| 370 |
|
| 0.11% |
| 0.16% |
| 0.31% |
| 0.52% |
| 0.91% |
| 1.2% |
| 1.3% |
| 1.6% |
| 1.7% |
| 1.4% |
| 1.5% |
| 1.6% |
| 1.9% |
| 2.3% |
| 2.2% |
| 2.4% |
| 2.1% |
| 2.2% |
| 2.6% |
| 3.1% |
|
