Dr Robin George Andrews, author of How to Kill an Asteroid, told Metro last week that an emergency situation might come down to trying to blast the asteroid with a nuclear bomb in space, or simply getting out of the way.
The retired astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station said this space rock could potentially strike with a force 500 times more powerful than the atomic bombs which ended World War Two.
This weekend, celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrass Tyson also hammered home the potential dangers (even with a lower chance of impact assessed at that time), saying: ‘At the moment, mansion-sized Asteroid 2024-YR4 has a one-in-fifty chance of hitting Earth in the next eight years.
Commander Hadfield said indications so far were that the asteroid was more likely to be ‘stony’ and could potentially reach the ground and make a crater, rather than break apart with a mid-air explosion.
Slamming into the asteroid with a spaceship, like when the DART mission hit Dimorphos, might not alter its trajectory fast enough to get us into the safe zone.
