"The reason you need a fair number of years to do this in real life is because if you deflect an asteroid, you want to be sure you are deflecting it completely away from the Earth by the time it actually comes around.
The largest telescope in space, it has been orbiting the sun, a million miles away from Earth, since January 2022 and can view asteroids in infrared vision, allowing their size to be better understood.
A Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart), in September 2022, was successful, nudging the 581ft diameter Dimorphos — which was no threat to Earth — into a new orbit around parent asteroid Didymos.
We only have that amount of time to prevent 2024 YR4 hitting Earth, and Dr Andrews thinks a lot more work needs to be done.
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first spotted on December 27 thanks to the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (Atlas) in Chile.
