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Anyone who’s seen Armageddon is familiar with the concept of using a nuclear weapon on an asteroid that has the potential to trigger a catastrophic event. That method has never been tested in real life, but that could change in the not-so-distant future thanks to a space rock that’s making its way toward our part of the solar system.
It’s been more than 65 million years since an asteroid around six miles wide crashed into what is now Mexico to usher in the extinction event that ended the age of the dinosaurs. That had nothing on the approximately 15-mile meteor that landed at the tip of the continent that would become Africa approximately two billion years ago, which is the largest strike scientists have ever recorded.
Humans have thankfully been able to avoid being impacted by any similarly massive meteors since homo sapiens started roaming the planet around 300,000 years ago. With that said, there have been some other notable incidents that are relatively recent history, including the Tunguska event that laid waste to a region of Siberia in 1908 and, most recently, the asteroid that rocked the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013.
There was once a point where humans were powerless to prevent those extraterrestrial wrecking balls from wreaking havoc. However, that’s no longer the case as experts have begun to explore strategies to change their trajectory—including the DART mission that saw NASA successfully alter the course of an asteroid in 2022.
We still have not reached a point where similar measures have needed to be taken to try to ward off a space rock that poses a legitimate threat, but it may only be a matter of time based on a recent proposal concerning one known as “2024 YR4.”
Experts want to fire nuclear weapons at an asteroid that could hit the Moon in 2024
Astronomers have the ability to monitor the galaxy for asteroids that have the potential to make a beeline toward Earth, and they’ve spent the last year keeping a close eye on “2024 YR4” after it was spotted by a telescope at an observatory in Chile.
The asteroid, which is estimated to be between 200 and 300 feet wide, initially garnered attention over a model that showed it had a 3.1% chance of striking the planet in 2032. The chance of a terrestrial impact has since become non-existent, but there is still some cause for concern when you consider there’s a 4% chance it could end up striking the Moon in December of that year and create a debris field that could pose a serious threat to satellites in orbit.
According to Live Science, that possibility led to experts from NASA and other agencies collaborating on a paper exploring potential ways to reduce the risk of an impact, which includes the use of “nuclear explosive devices.”
A DART-style mission was also proposed, but one involving nuclear weapons was positioned as a backup plan that could theoretically launch between 2029 and 2031. That “kinetic disruption mission” would involve a spaceship armed with two 100-kiloton nukes (around 6.5 times bigger than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima) that could be fired at 2024 YR4 to alter its path.
It doesn’t seem like that mission will be a necessity as things currently stand, as the odds of a lunar impact coming to fruition are still incredibly slim. However, it never hurts to be too prepared.