NASA plotting how to destroy city-killer asteroid that has 1.5% chance of hitting Earth heres how it would work

NASA is on high alert for a “city-killer” asteroid that’s headed toward Earth — cuz they don’t wanna miss a thing.The asteroid, called 2024 YR4, now has a 1.5% probability of hitting earth in 2032, according to NASA — and international agencies are feverishly working together to track the space rock and looking at how to blow it to smithereens if necessary.“No one is panicking, but it’s definitely what we’re talking about in the hallways of NASA,” says a project manager at Kennedy Space Center.“We know we have enough time to act, but now’s the time to start planning.You can’t half-ass this at the last minute.”On Tuesday NASA put out a bombshell estimate that put the probability of deep impact at 3.1%, or 1 in 32 — more likely than choosing a correct number on a roulette wheel.

The space agency later upgraded Earth’s chances of missing the space rock with new observations on Wednesday.YR4 is believed to be 130 to 300 feet wide — about the size of a large office building.Its projected trajectory could mean impact in eight of the world’s most populated cities — including Bogota, Colombia; Lagos, Nigeria; and Mumbai, India — with up to 110 million people potentially at risk for a strike if it hits Earth.If it hit one of those cities, the consequences would be catastrophic.“If you put it over Paris or London or New York, you basically wipe out the whole city and some of the environs,” Bruce Betts, chief scientist for the nonprofit Planetary Society, told AFP.If world space agencies determine that the asteroid is likely to hit Earth, they could send a rocket armed with explosives towards the rock as it hurtles towards us in 2032, changing its trajectory or destroying it entirely.“Destroying it would be easy,” says the NASA project manager.

“It wouldn’t even take that much explosives.The trick is getting to it, and delivering the explosives precisely at the right time, at the right angle.

That’s the hard part.”Th...