At the end of last year, astronomers discovered the asteroid of 2024 JR4, which in 2032 was able to clash with the earth with an opportunity of up to 2.3 percent. Now an expert has discovered that the cosmic chunk could also hit the moon.
The Asteroid 2024 VR4, which was found on December 27 last year with the help of the ateroid Warn System Atlas in Río Hurtado (Chile), is between 40 and 100 meters in size. According to the European space agency ESA, he is on a collision course with the earth on which he could take on December 22, 2032.
According to the most likely scenario, the asteroid would explode in the atmosphere of the earth and release eight megaton energy in TNT equivalents. This is more than 500 times the energy of the atomic bomb that was dropped to the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the Second World War.
According to calculations, countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador are at risk. But the earth is not the only heavenly body with which 2024 JR4 could clash. There is also – albeit low – the possibility that the cosmic chunk will hit the moon.
This conclusion comes to David Rankin, who works for the Catalina Sky Survey, which is supported by the American space agency NASA, which is looking for Comet, potentially dangerous asteroids and almost -EARth objects. He estimates the chance that 2024 JR4 collide with the moon, up to 0.3 percent.
Will beat large craters on the moon
Because the nice earth does not have an atmosphere, the asteroid will reach its surface unhindered and leave a crater with a diameter of up to two kilometers when it is influenced, says Rankin. However, this is not much after the standards of the moon, which was exposed to countless asteroid and comet attacks in the course of its existence.
The effects of the collision would probably be visible from the earth – although we would probably not be influenced. “There is a possibility that some material will be thrown back that the earth could hit, but I very much doubt that this is a greater danger,” Rankin told the “new scientist”.
With the space telescope “James Webb” (photo below), astronomers 2024 JR4, which racet through the room at about 48,000 kilometers per hour, have a look.
In the coming months it will leave the earth and then not be seen for the time being. The Asteroid 2024 VR4 can only be again observed from 2028 – then scientists will re -evaluate the risk of an impact on our earth or on the moon.
Source: Krone
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