The 2024 YR4 satellite is likely to hit Earth in the next few years. NASA has increased the likelihood of the 2024 YR4 satellite hitting Earth to 1/32.
The satellite is expected to approach Earth in December 2032. Scientists are working to calculate the possibility of the satellite hitting Earth, as well as determine the speed, trajectory and composition of the satellite.
2024 YR4 was discovered in December 2024 and the James Webb space kinh is now being deployed to better observe the satellite.
If it hits Earth, a 100m long cosmic rock could cause widespread devastation, enough to level a large city or a small country.
When it hits Earth, the satellite will explode with a force hundreds of times stronger than the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima (Japan). A similar satellite crash into Earth in Tunguska (Siberia, Russia) 100 years ago hit a forest and flattened hundreds of square kilometers.
Currently, the 2024 YR4 satellite is predicted to collide over a large area, stretching from the Pacific Ocean, across South America, the Atlantic, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This rocket launcher takes the satellite through some of the most populous cities in the world: Bogota (Colombia), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Lagos (Nigeria), Khartoum (Sudan), Mumbai, Kolkata (India) and Dhaka (Bangladesh).
If the satellite crashes into these cities, more than 100 million people will be affected, causing great loss of life and destroying many houses and land.
In an interview with LBC, former space traveler and former commander of the Chris Hadfield International Space Station said that the devastation caused by the 2024 YR4 satellite hitting Earth would be 500 times stronger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear explosions.
The satellite is like "a bullet hitting the Earth directly from deep space, moving at a speed of about 17 km/s," he said.
