Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 4% chance of hitting the moon. Here’s why that’s a scientific goldmine

There’s a bright side to every situation. In 2032, the moon itself might have a particularly bright side if it is blasted by a 60-meter-wide asteroid. The chances of such an event are still relatively small (only around 4%) but are non-negligible. And scientists are starting to prepare both for the bad (massive risks to satellites and huge meteors raining down on a large portion of the planet) and the good (a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study the geology, seismology, and chemical makeup of our nearest neighbor). A new paper from Yifan He of Tsinghua University and co-authors, posted to the arXiv preprint server, looks at the bright side of all of the potential interesting science we can do if a collision does, indeed, happen.

The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org.