An asteroid threat to our satellites

The good news: 2024 YR4 is no longer considered a threat to the earth. The bad news: its course suggests it may strike the moon. The consequences of a moon strike are under active discussion, as is the matter of what the human species might do about it before the predicted time (December 2032).

Some background? Late in 2024, astronomers discovered a building-sized asteroid, 2024 YR4, on a course that made collision with Earth possible. They at first estimated that as a 3% possibility of a collision. It was not the human-extinction threat beloved by science fiction screenwriters, but it could have created widespread damage wherever on land it might hit, or generate a tsunami in the event of an ocean impact.

More recent data about 2024 YR4 suggests that, though the Earth is safe, the prospect of a hit on the moon is respectable, about 4%, or 1-in-25. Some scientists are concerned that a lunar impact could increase the meteoroid flux by up to 1,000 times, flooding into space centimeter-sized lunar debris, effectively bullets, wreaking havoc with the satellites that make much earthly communication possible. There are plans in the works for deflecting or even nuking the satellite if a lunar impact comes to seem probable.

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A Story About Coleridge

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Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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