Asteroid 2024 YR4 reaches level 3 on the Torino Scale, giving it a 1% chance of impacting Earth on Dec. 22, 2032.
But the world's space agencies have now made a rare emergency decision as the chances of Earth being hit by a 'city-killer asteroid' rise.
Worryingly, this would make its impact equivalent to the Tunguska asteroid, which flattened 830 square miles of Siberian forest in 1908. With an estimated diameter of up to 90 metres , the asteroid could do some serious damage should it hit Earth.When scientists want to know how big an asteroid is, they use a very powerful telescope to measure the light reflected from its surface.An ESA spokesperson says: '2024 YR4 could be 40 m across and very reflective, or 90 m across and not very reflective.'
The JWST will overcome both of these issues by taking images of 2024 YR4 from its position 1 million miles away from Earth. The ESA spokesperson says: 'Astronomers around the world are using powerful telescopes to measure the asteroid’s orbit as accurately as possible. But knowing its orbit will only tell us the asteroid could impact Earth, not how significant an impact could be.
Advertisement That is 100 times more power than the nuclear bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, which killed between 100,000 and 180,000 people. The scientists will then make another observation in May as the asteroid travels out into space, the last chance to see it before it returns in 2028.
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