Astronomers want to blow up asteroid before it strikes Moon - Sound familiar?

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On the evening of December 22, 2032, a modest-sized asteroid called 2024 YR4 could potentially slam into the Moon, and the collision could produce a meteor shower unlike anything seen in living memory. The rocks lighting up our skies wouldn’t be space debris from a distant comet or asteroid, but fragments of the Moon itself — blasted free by a cosmic bullet traveling 13 kilometers per second. Vital space satellites and even astronauts onboard the International Space Station may be at risk.

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Astronomers are considering blowing up the “city killer” asteroid, estimated to have a small chance of crashing onto the Moon in 2032, to cut the risk of the collision debris destroying satellites.

The near-Earth space rock, dubbed 2024 YR4, was previously thought to have a small chance of impacting Earth.

Later observations of the 300ft rock revealed that the odds of its collision with Earth are almost negligible, while it still had small chances of impacting the Moon.

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Estimates of the asteroid’s trajectory suggest it has a 4 per cent chance of hitting the lunar surface in December 2032, with the likely Moon-impact predicted to produce a crater about 1km in diameter.

Researchers previously calculated that 2024 YR4 may generate a lunar debris cloud weighing over 100,000,000 kg, which could “accrete to the Earth on timescales of a few days” and expose satellites orbiting the Earth to meteorites for years.

To avoid this likelihood, astronomers, including those from Nasa, propose blowing up 2024 YR4 altogether as part of what they call a “kinetic disruption mission”.

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Another proposed option includes detonating 2024 YR4 using “nuclear explosive devices”.

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The space rock could weigh anywhere from 72.7 million to 2 billion pounds, and a mission to blow it up into pieces could take anywhere from five to seven years to develop, with the next available launch window from late 2029 to late 2031.

Scientists propose sending two 100-kiloton nuclear devices to the asteroid, each about five to eight times as powerful as the nuclear bombs dropped by the US on Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of WWII.

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