Asteroid 2024 YR4, which was discovered in December 2024, is currently ranked 3 out of 10 on the Torino Scale. NASA will monitor the asteroid, which has a slim chance of hitting Earth in 2032. The James Webb Space Telescope is being deployed by NASA to observe the asteroid. The asteroid will be at its brightest in March 2025, when the first round of NASA observations are scheduled. The follow-up will take place in May when YR4 moves away from the Sun. The next opportunity to study the asteroid will be in 2028.According to a UK scientist, Dr Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist, it may already be too late to deflect the "city killer" asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a one in 43 chance of striking Earth in 2032. The asteroid is as tall as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, so if it strikes land, it could wipe out cities, but if it lands in the ocean, the effects would be minimal.There is a 0.3 percent chance that the 90-metre-wide asteroid will crash into the Moon. A potential impact could create a crater hundreds of metres wide, ejecting debris into space, because the Moon does not have an atmosphere like Earth to slow down asteroids. Some debris from the Moon might rain back onto Earth if 2024 YR4 impacts the Moon.NASA hopes to continue to study the asteroid and expects its chances of colliding with Earth could be revised down as it learns further about its path. Space agencies across the world are probing ways to counter the threat posed by hazardous asteroids like 2024 YR4, using experimental methods such as slamming a spacecraft onto them or attempting to move them off course with nuclear blasts. China has also recently announced vacancies for multiple roles for a “planetary defence post”. China announced a conceptual plan last year for a mission to observe and strike an asteroid with a spacecraft to alter its path around 2030.The DART was successful in knocking a 580-ft-wide asteroid off course in 2022. However, asteroids like Dimorphos tend to be rubble piles, not solid single rocks, but boulders weakly bound by their own gravity. Hitting them just right can produce a debris-like thrust effect, but hitting them too hard will shatter them. According to the UK scientist, nobody wants to accidentally disrupt an asteroid because those components can still head for Earth, like turning a cannonball into a shotgun spray. The change in velocity delivered by the impact was 2.7mm/s.

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