If an asteroid the size of YR4 were to hit our planet, it would not end life on Earth, but it would be devastating. At that size, the impact would be equivalent to a
10-megaton bomb, Tonry says—more than enough to cause widespread regional decimation.Everything within three or four kilometers would be incinerated, Tonry says.Everything out to maybe 10 kilometers is smashed. It’s not a nuclear explosion, but it’s an extremely hot explosion. There would be a huge fireball that would start fires out to 15 kilometers, something like that. It would kill a lot of people if they haven’t moved out of the way.
And time is of the essence. The asteroid is currently moving away from Earth, and by April, it will no longer be visible to telescopes. Outside this slim window of opportunity, the next chance to observe the asteroid to assess its threat won’t arrive until YR4 next swoops near Earth in 2028—the only such pass before the unnerving deadline of December 22, 2032. If the asteroid still poses an impact risk by then, there would be perilously little time to stand up a robust response. Prudence may thus demand devising a mitigation strategy in the interim on the off chance—even if remote—that the asteroid could hit.
Jonathan O'Callaghan
When it comes whipping by in 2028, we could have a mission basically all ready to go when new observations come in, Tonry says. Alternatively, he adds,we could decide to leave it aloneif forecasts show the asteroid won’t strike Earth.
In the meantime an impact in 2032 from this asteroid has been almost completely ruled out – though there’s still a chance it will hit the Moon instead. But even if the likelihood of impact would have remained perilously high, I very much doubt a mission to deflect it would get off the ground in due time. Like in the movie Don’t Look Up, most of the world would likely shrug the threat off as too distant, or simply dismiss it outright as misinformation or some sort of government conspiracy. Every attempt to advance the planning or launch would be flooded with social media posts asking why are we spending money on this instead of the countries on the projected impact path, or people claiming the mission would instead divert the asteroid towards Earth to use as a weapon against the enemy of the day.
Come to think of it, this last one could be a legitimate concern; would China or Russia trust the current administration of the United States to not do that if they had control of the trajectory of an incoming asteroid? The United States would certainly not trust any other country to undergo such a mission. China would heavily distrust India as well, given their historic tensions; while I doubt India would have the capabilities to execute this type of mission within the next four years, they have the greatest incentive to because the calculated path of impact would go through their territory. The generalized geopolitical distrust would either freeze efforts to mount this mission, or cause countries to rush to get to the asteroid first, or to attempt to shoot down the first mission to launch. I dread to imagine what would happen should the mission arrive at the asteroid and misfire somehow, altering its orbit towards another area of impact; the tensions and accusations would run dangerously hot.
This is all hypothetical of course because most countries would not be able to organize (or fund) this on their own. And the one space agency which performed something comparable (NASA with DART) is currently being defunded by the Trump administration for the benefit of Musk’s business interests, so devoting efforts to an emergency asteroid deflection would be very low on their list of priorities. As with climate change, we as a species are very ill-prepared to deal with global challenges that require trust and cooperation.
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