Bhubaneswar: NASA's peeping into sky has begun. Time is running fast. Come April, this 55-metre structure will go into hiding, keeping on its journey towards the earth.
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NASA is scanning the sky hurriedly, because when after 10 days shiny moon comes back, it will light down the NASA’s investigation that the 55 mt object will get obscured from NASA’s telescope.
As per NASA, “Now that skies are darker after a week of limited visibility around full moon, astronomers have resumed their observations. Ground-based telescopes require dark skies to observe them, which are often very faint. Around the time of a full moon, the sky becomes too bright to detect these faint points of light.”
What is that making astronomers go for sky scanning in dark?
The astronomers are tracking the asteroid – 2024 YR4.
NASA says the asteroid his hurtling fast towards earth. And it may hit the planet, precisely, on DECEMBER 22, 2032.
And the astronomers are hurried and scurried over because, this YR4 will do vanishing act after APRIL 2025. NASA astronomers cannot track it after April this year.
NASA SCIENTISTS ‘YES-NO’ ACT
The astronomers at NASA are not sure till date. At times they raise the risk of YR4 hitting the earth, and at other times downgrade that. Here is how they vaccilate.
- FEB 18: NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has incorporated the new observations reported and updated the impact probability of asteroid 2024 YR4 in 2032 to 3.1%.
- This has been the highest impact probability NASA has ever recorded for an object of this size or larger.
- FEB 19: A day after, however, NASA’s new data has reduced the impact probability to 1.5%.
- However, NASA expects the impact probability to continue to evolve as new observations of asteroid 2024 YR4 are made over the coming days and weeks.
- For the impact probability to drop to zero, NASA says, the Earth would need to fall outside of the range of potential locations of asteroid 2024 YR4 on Dec. 22, 2032
- This asteroid’s possibility of banging the Moon has been 0.8%, says NASA.
- This shows 2024 YR4 will be keeping all in tenterhooks for time to come.
2024 YR4 ‘Mr INDIA ‘ ACT
As per NASA, by April 2025, the object will be so far away that it will become too faint to be detected by Earth-based telescopes.
And further updates will not be possible until 2028, when 2024 YR4 approaches Earth again and become bright enough to be detected.
2024 YR4 HURTLING WILL HURT WHERE?
NASA’s new data released suggests that the 2024 YR4 asteroid would pose a risk to some of the most densely populated regions in the world, if it were to hit Earth.
The NASA report says that 2024 YR4 could likely hit somewhere along a "risk corridor" which NASA has identified as stretching across the eastern Pacific Ocean, northern South America, the Atlantic Ocean, African, the Arabian Sea, and South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar and Bangladesh.
WILL IT USHER D-DAY?
As per NASA, “though, the exact size of 2024 YR4 is still uncertain, but an airburst is a likely scenario for its size range. If the asteroid were to enter the atmosphere over the ocean, models indicate that airbursting objects of this size would be unlikely to cause significant tsunami, either from the middle of the ocean or even nearer shore.” The report then added,
- If the asteroid entered the atmosphere over a populated region, an airburst of an object on the smaller side of the size range, about 130 - 200 feet (40 - 60 meters) could shatter windows or cause minor structural damage across a city.
- An asteroid about 300 feet (90 meters) in size, which is much less likely, could cause more severe damage, potentially collapsing residential structures across a city and shattering windows across larger regions.
