A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is prepared for launch at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., on April 18, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

International Space Station (image used for representation)

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On 27 December last year, astronomers using the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile discovered a small asteroid moving away from Earth. Follow up observations have revealed that the asteroid, 2024 YR4, is on a path that might lead to a collision with our planet on December 22 2032.

In other words, the newly-discovered space rock poses a significant impact threat to our planet.

It sounds like something from a bad Hollywood movie. But in reality, there’s no need to panic – this is just another day living on a target in a celestial shooting gallery.

So what’s the story? What do we know about 2024 YR4? And what would happen if it did collide with Earth?

A target in the celestial shooting gallery

As Earth moves around the Sun, it is continually encountering dust and debris that dates back to the birth of the Solar system. The system is littered with such debris, and the meteors and fireballs seen every night are evidence of just how polluted our local neighbourhood is.

But most of the debris is far too small to cause problems to life on Earth. There is far more tiny debris out there than larger chunks – so impacts from objects that could imperil life on Earth’s surface are much less frequent.

The most famous impact came some 66 million years ago. A giant rock from space, at least 10 kilometres in diameter, crashed into Earth – causing a mass extinction that wiped out something like 75% of all species on Earth.

Impacts that large are, fortunately, very rare events. Current estimates suggest that objects like the one which killed the dinosaurs only hit Earth every 50 million years or so. Smaller impacts, though, are more common.

On June 30 1908, there was a vast explosion in a sparsely populated part of Siberia. When explorers later reached the location of the explosion, they found an astonishing site: a forest levelled, with all the trees fallen in the same direction. As they moved around, the direction of the fallen trees changed – all pointing inwards towards the epicentre of the explosion.

In total, the Tunguska event levelled an area of almost 2,200 square kilometres – roughly equivalent to the area of greater Sydney. Fortunately, that forest was extremely remote. While plants and animals were killed in the blast zone, it is thought that, at most, only three people perished.

Estimates vary of how frequent such large collisions should be. Some argue that Earth should experience a similar impact, on average, once per century. Others suggest such collisions might only happen every 10,000 years or so. The truth is we don’t know – but that’s part of the fun of science.

More recently, a smaller impact created global excitement. On 15 February 2013, a small asteroid (likely about 18 metres in diameter) detonated near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk.

The explosion, about 30 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, generated a powerful shock-wave and extremely bright flash of light. Buildings were damaged, windows smashed, and almost 1,500 people were injured – although there were no fatalities.

It served as a reminder, however, that Earth will be hit again. It’s only a question of when.

Which brings us to our latest contender – asteroid 2024 YR4.

The 1-in-77 chance of collision to watch

2024 YR4 has been under close observation by astronomers for a little over a month. It was discovered just a few days after making a relatively close approach to our planet, and it is now receding into the dark depths of the Solar System. By April, it will be lost to even the world’s largest telescopes.

The observations carried out over the past month have allowed astronomers to extrapolate the asteroid’s motion forward over time, working out its orbit around the Sun. As a result, it has become clear that, on December 22 2032, it will pass very close to our planet – and may even collide with us.

At present, our best models of the asteroid’s motion have an uncertainty of around 100,000 kilometres in its position at the time it would be closest to Earth. At around 12,000 kilometres in diameter, our planet falls inside that region of uncertainty.

Calculations suggest there is currently around a 1-in-77 chance that the asteroid will crash into our planet at that time. Of course, that means there is still a 76-in-77 chance it will miss us.

When will we know for sure?

With every new observation of 2024 YR4, astronomers’ knowledge of its orbit improves slightly – which is why the collision likelihoods you might see quoted online keep changing. We’ll be able to follow the asteroid as it recedes from Earth for another couple of months, by which time we’ll have a better idea of exactly where it will be on that fateful day in December 2032.

But it is unlikely we’ll be able to say for sure whether we’re in the clear at that point.

Fortunately, the asteroid will make another close approach to the Earth in December 2028 – passing around 8 million kilometres from our planet. Astronomers will be ready to perform a wide raft of observations that will help us to understand the size and shape of the asteroid, as well as giving an incredibly accurate overview of where it will be in 2032.

At the end of that encounter, we will know for sure whether there will be a collision in 2032. And if there is to be a collision that year, we’ll be able to predict where on Earth that collision will be – likely to a precision of a few tens of kilometres.

How big would the impact be?

At the moment, we don’t know the exact size of 2024 YR4. Even through Earth’s largest telescopes, it is just a single tiny speck in the sky. So we have to estimate its size based on its brightness. Depending on how reflective the asteroid is, current estimates place it as being somewhere between 40 and 100 metres across.

What does that mean for a potential impact? Well, it would depend on exactly what the asteroid is made of.

The most likely scenario is that the asteroid is a rocky pile of rubble. If that turns out to be the case, then the impact would be very similar to the Tunguska event in 1908.

The asteroid would detonate in the atmosphere, with a shockwave blasting Earth’s surface as a result. The Tunguska impact was a “city killer” type event, levelling forest across a city-sized patch of land.

A less likely possibility is that the asteroid is made of metal. Based on its orbit around the Sun, this seems unlikely – but we can’t rule it out.

In that case, the asteroid would make it through the atmosphere intact, and crash into Earth’s surface. If it hit on the land, it would carve out a new impact crater, probably more than a kilometre across and a couple of hundred metres deep – something similar to Meteor Crater in Arizona.

Again, this would be quite spectacular for the region around the impact – but that would be about it.

Living in a remarkable time

This all sounds like doom and gloom. After all, we know that the Earth will be hit again – either by 2024 YR4 or something else. But there’s a real positive to take out of all this.

There has been life on Earth for more than 3 billion years. In all that time, impacts have come along and caused destruction and devastation many times.

But there has never been a species, to our knowledge, that understood the risk, could detect potential threats in advance, and even do something about the threat. Until now.

In just the past few years, we have discovered 11 asteroids before they hit our planet. In each case, we have predicted where they would hit, and watched the results.

We have also, in recent years, demonstrated a growing capacity to deflect potentially threatening asteroids. NASA’s DART mission (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test) was an astounding success.

For the first time in more than 3 billion years of life on Earth, we can do something about the risk posed by rocks from space. So don’t panic! But instead, sit back and watch the show.

Jonti Horner is a Professor of Astrophysics, University of Southern Queensland. This article is republished from The Conversation.

Russia launched a Soyuz rocket early on Tuesday carrying two satellites designed to monitor the space weather around Earth and 53 small satellites, including two Iranian ones, Russia’s Roscosmos space agency said.

The Soyuz-2.1 launch spacecraft, which lifted off from Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome, carried two Ionosfera-M satellites, which will become part of the space system for monitoring the Earth’s ionosphere, the agency said.

The ionosphere, where Earth’s atmosphere meets space, stretches roughly 50 to 400 miles (80 to 644 km) above Earth’s surface, according to information provided on NASA’s website.

Each Ionosfera-M satellite weighs 430 kg (948 lb) and its working orbit is at an altitude of 820 km (510 miles), according to Interfax news agency.

The system will include in total four of the Ionosfera-M satellites. The next two devices are planned to be launched in 2025, Roscosmos reported.

Among the 53 small satellites are two Iranian satellites, the Kowsar, a high-resolution imaging satellite, and Hodhod, a small communications satellite, as well as the first Russian-Chinese student satellite Druzhba ATURK.

Russia in February launched into space an Iranian research satellite that will scan Iran’s topography from orbit, Iran’s state media reported at the time.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Beijing:

China on Tuesday announced plans to launch a manned lunar mission, construct a lunar space station and explore habitable planets and extra-terrestrial life to expand its space programme in the next few decades.

China’s top space bodies unveiled a national mid- and long-term development programme for space science, which will guide the country’s planning of space science missions and space research from 2024 to 2050.

An established space power, China in recent years built its own space station which is currently in operation besides launching several space missions, including a lunar probe that collected samples for the first time from the far side of the Moon and brought them back to Earth for scientific studies.

The programme released by the China Academy of Sciences (CAS), China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Agency to the media here outlined the goals of China’s space science, including 17 priority areas under five key scientific themes, and a three-phase roadmap.

The international lunar research station initiated by China will be constructed during the second phase from 2028 to 2035, Ding Chibiao, vice president of the CAS, told the media here.

The programme also outlines a roadmap for the development of space science in China through 2050.

In the first phase, leading up to 2027, China will focus on the space station operation, implementing the manned lunar exploration project, the fourth phase of its lunar exploration programme and the planetary exploration project.

Under the new plan, scientists will also explore the habitability of celestial bodies in the solar system and exoplanets and search for extraterrestrial life, he said.

Key areas of space development in the coming years will be the origin and evolution of the solar system, characterisation of planetary atmospheres, the search for extraterrestrial life, and exoplanet detection, Ding said.

The theme of the extreme universe focuses on exploring the origin and evolution of the universe, revealing the physical laws under extreme cosmic conditions, dark matter and the universe’s origin and evolution, as well as the detection of cosmic baryonic matter, according to the programme.

Studies will be conducted on detecting medium to low-frequency gravitational waves and primordial gravitational waves, with the goal of uncovering the nature of gravity and space-time, and the exploration of the Sun and the Earth.

Priority areas include Earth’s cycle systems, comprehensive observations of the Earth-Moon, space weather observation, three-dimensional solar exploration, and heliosphere exploration, according to the programme. 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Cape Canaveral, Florida:

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today shared a stunning high-definition video of the Polaris space mission around Earth. Sharing the video highlights, Mr Musk said, “Looks like CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), but it is real”.

According to the mission’s official website, the Polaris space programme is a “first-of-its-kind effort to rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities, while continuing to raise funds and awareness for important causes on Earth.”

The Polaris space programme includes three human spaceflight missions that will demonstrate new technologies, conduct extensive research and ultimately culminate in the first flight of SpaceX’s Starship with humans on board.

Here is the video highlights of the Polaris mission that SpaceX and Elon Musk and shared:

Looks like CGI, but these are all real video highlights from the @PolarisProgram space mission
pic.twitter.com/CLCzhJndF5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 27, 2024

MISSION I – POLARIS DAWN

The first of the three missions have already happened, while two others will happen “soon”, the mission website says, adding that ‘Mission I’ – named Polaris Dawn – sent a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to low-Earth orbit from the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The spaceship launched earlier this month – September 10. The crew on board completed all four mission objectives before returning to Earth on September 15.

THE OBJECTIVE

The Polaris Dawn mission tested the Falcon 9 and Dragon’s maximum performance, flying higher than any Dragon mission to date, reaching the highest Earth orbit ever flown with a peak apogee of 1,408.1 kilometers above Earth. Orbiting through portions of the Van Allen radiation belt, the Polaris Dawn crew conducted research with the aim of better understanding the effects of spaceflight and space radiation on human health.

THE SPACEWALK

At altitudes ranging between approximately 190 and 740 kilometers above the Earth, the crew completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk. It was performed in SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity or EVA spacesuits, upgraded from the current intravehicular or IVA suit.

FUTURE MISSIONS

‘Mission II’, which is yet to be named, will build upon the first one and will continue to excel in areas of in-space communications while carrying out other research work.

The third mission – ‘Mission III’, which also doesn’t have a name yet, will be the first-human sapceflight on SpaceX’s Starship, which is the world’s first reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit. It aims to fly to the Moon and Mars, and someday, even beyond.

According to the mission website, the program are named after Polaris, a constellation of three stars more commonly known as the North Star, which has been a guiding light throughout human history to help us navigate the world and inspire progress.
 

Have you ever wanted to make a $150,000 gamble? If you’re right, you open a new window to the universe. But if you’re wrong, you’ve just wasted a lot of money and time.

That is exactly what my team did when we pointed the Keck telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawai’i at what looked like empty space, hoping to reveal the hidden gas that shrouds all galaxies in the universe. There were cheers in the control room when we realised our gamble had paid off.

In a study published today in Nature Astronomy, we reveal the first detailed picture of the gas shroud around a galaxy, extending 100,000 light years out into “empty” space. If our own Milky Way has a similar halo, it is likely already interacting with the halo of our nearest galactic neighbour, Andromeda.

Most of the universe is not the bright stars

Most of the matter in the universe is not in the bright stars that make up the spectacular images of galaxies we see. For one thing, galaxies are surrounded by dark matter – which astronomers believe is some kind of exotic invisible particle.

But even most of the normal matter is not in stars. Instead, it is in gigantic clouds of gas that surround galaxies.

We believe these halos around galaxies contain as much as 70–90% of the universe’s normal matter (mostly consisting of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen gas).

Understanding this diffuse gas – which is where all the stars and planets we see had their beginnings – helps us understand more about our own story, on the grandest scales.

However, this halo of gas is spread out over huge areas of space, which makes it extremely faint. In fact, it is 10,000 to 100,000 times fainter than the bright parts of galaxies.

We have known about these gas halos since the 1950s, when astronomers discovered they were absorbing certain frequencies of light that passed through them.

However, these measurements reduce gigantic regions of space stretching hundreds of thousands of light years into a single point – so we knew very little about the exact size or shape of the halos, or the way gas flows between them and their host galaxies.

How to see a galactic halo

For a long time, it was believed to be impossible to capture an image of the halos. However, that changed with the development of a new kind of spectrograph – a device for viewing the spectrum of different wavelengths of light in an image – called an “image slicer”.

The image slicer lets us take spectroscopic images of regions of the night sky to much fainter levels than previous generation instruments.

A team led by Chris Martin at Caltech (one of our collaborators on this project) built an ultra-faint spectrograph called the Keck Cosmic Web Imager and put it on the Keck telescope. The Keck is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, and its location atop the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawai’i is one of the best astronomical sites in the world.

With the new device in place, we are able to see extremely faint things in the sky.

We used this instrument to stare for an entire night at the apparently empty space around a galaxy. This was followed by intense work analysing the data, as we were working at the limits of what the telescope could do.

Credit here goes to Nikki Nielsen, now a professor at Oklahoma University, who led the data analysis and the writing of the paper when she was working in our team at Swinburne University. To our excitement the gamble paid off, and returned data that allowed us to generate an image of the halo of gas around one galaxy.

What does the shroud of gas around galaxies look like?

Our team took images of the glow of hydrogen and oxygen gas over a region ten times larger than what would normally be called a “galaxy”.

This was exciting! Firstly, because it confirmed the idea that most of the universe’s ordinary matter is in these diffuse halos of gas.

We also found that the galaxy does not smoothly “fade out” into the surrounding halo. There is an abrupt break from one to the other.

In the past, a lot of debate surrounded the nature of this transition. In our data, it is easy to see an abrupt change near the edge of where the vast majority of stars are located.

Why can we see the halo at all?

There is still a mystery as to why we can see the gas at all. It is glowing, but we don’t know why.

We often see the glow of hydrogen gas inside a galaxy, but there we know it is glowing because it has been heated up by strong radiation from nearby stars. Outside a galaxy, however, there are not enough nearby stars to heat up the gas enough to explain the glow we see.

One possibility is that the halo is made of streams of gas moving in different directions. When the streams collide at high speed, the shock makes them glow.

Another possibility is that some very heavy stars and certain black holes (both inside galaxies) produce very large amounts of ultraviolet light. Some of this light can escape the galaxy, and might provide a kind of ambient background UV lighting for the cosmos.

Combined with fast-moving streams of gas, the ultraviolet background might be enough to produce the glow we have seen – but it will take more observations to know for sure.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

File picture of ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 Vikram Lander resting on the moon’s surface
| Photo Credit: ANI

India celebrate its first National Space Day on Friday (August 23, 2024) with the theme, “Touching lives while touching the Moon: India’s space saga”.

August 23 is celebrated as the National Space Day after India achieved a historic milestone when the Chandrayaan-3 mission completed a soft landing on the Moon on the day in 2023.

The landing made India the fourth country to accomplish the feat and the first to land on the lunar South Pole.

Various institutions around the country are celebrating the day with public events.

ALSO READ: Since Chandrayaan-3, what has India’s space programme been up to?

Taking to X, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri, Nitin Gadkari, and Mansukh Mandaviya expressed joy over India’s space achievements.

Mr. Modi said his government has taken a series of futuristic decisions relating to this sector and will do even more in the times to come.

He said on X, “Greetings to everyone on the first National Space Day. We recall with great pride our nation’s achievements in the space sector. It is also a day to laud the contributions of our space scientists.”

“Our Government has taken a series of futuristic decisions relating to this sector and we will do even more in the times to come,” he added.

“Today, we celebrate ISRO’s incredible journey on National Space Day. From transporting rocket components on bullock carts to landing on the Moon’s South Pole, India’s space program has reached new heights. With Indian Oil’s Cryogenics playing a key role, our space saga continues under PM @narendramodi ji’s visionary leadership as we prepare for Gaganyaan in 2024,” Hardeep Singh Puri posted on X.

“On this #NationalSpaceDay, let’s celebrate ‘s cosmic strides, from #Chandrayaan-3’s lunar triumph to the awe-inspiring #Aditya-L1 #solar mission. We salute the brilliance of our scientists and the @isro crew who make India’s cosmic dreams a reality. With upcoming missions like #Gaganyaan, India is set to reach even greater heights. Here’s to our space pioneers and the boundless frontiers they continue to explore! wrote Nitin Gadkari on X.

“As the nation comes together to celebrate the #NationalSpaceDay, we fondly remember the historic achievement of our scientists. It marks a watershed moment in our quest for space exploration and we remain committed to the goal of ‘Touching Lives While Touching the Moon’,” said Mansukh Mandaviya.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams gets ready to board the Boeing’s Starliner capsule atop an Atlas V rocket for a mission to the International Space Station at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, on May 6, 2024. The launch was called off.
| Photo Credit: AP

The target date for the next attempt to launch Boeing Co’s Starliner space capsule on its first crewed test flight featuring Indian-American Sunita Williams has been pushed back to no earlier than May 17, to replace a pressure valve on its booster rocket, NASA said on Tuesday.

The CST-100 Starliner’s debut voyage carrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been highly anticipated and much-delayed as Boeing scrambles to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a greater share of lucrative NASA business.

The test flight was called off on Monday night with less than two hours left in the countdown after a pressure regulation valve malfunctioned on the upper-stage liquid oxygen tank of the Atlas V rocket that was to launch the new capsule into orbit.

The two-member crew — NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 58 — had been strapped into their seats aboard the spacecraft for about an hour before launch activities were suspended.

The rocket, a separate component from the Starliner capsule, was furnished for the mission by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.

After Monday night’s aborted launch attempt, NASA, Boeing and ULA announced that they would seek to try again as early as Friday, May 10.

But in an update posted Tuesday evening, NASA said more time was needed after ULA “decided to remove and replace” the faulty pressure valve. That will require the rocket to be rolled back to its hangar on Wednesday for repairs, leak checks and other reviews ahead of a second launch attempt, NASA said.

Those operations pushed the potential launch date back another week, NASA said.

The long-awaited first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was called off for at least 24 hours over a technical glitch with the Atlas V rocket that was being readied to launch the new astronaut capsule to orbit on Monday night.

The CST-100 Starliner’s inaugural voyage carrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) has been highly anticipated and much-delayed as Boeing scrambles to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for a greater share of lucrative NASA business.

ALSO READ | Significance of Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight on May 7 | Explained

It comes two years after the gumdrop-shaped capsule completed its first test flight to the orbital laboratory without humans aboard. The Starliner’s first uncrewed flight to the ISS in 2019 ended in failure.

Its latest flight was scrubbed with less than two hours left in the countdown as the capsule stood poised for blastoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop an Atlas V rocket furnished by United Launch Alliance, a Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture.

The postponement, attributed to an issue with a valve in the Atlas rocket’s second stage, was announced during a live NASA webcast.

It was not immediately clear how long the issue would take to address, but the next available launch windows for the mission are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights.

The two-member crew — NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 61, and Sunita Williams, 58 — had been strapped into their seats aboard the spacecraft for about an hour before launch activities were suspended.

They were subsequently assisted safely out of the capsule by technicians and whisked away from the launch complex in a van to await a second flight attempt once the issue has been resolved.

It is not uncommon in the space industry for countdowns to be halted at the 11th hour and for launches to be postponed for days or weeks, even when seemingly minor malfunctions or unusual sensor readings are detected, especially in new spacecraft flying humans for the first time.

Boeing faces intense public scrutiny of all its activities after its commercial airplane operations have been staggered by several crises, including the mid-air blowout of a plane door plug in January. The company has been eager to get its Starliner space venture off the ground to show signs of success and redeem a program years behind schedule with more than $1.5 billion in cost overruns.

While Boeing has struggled, SpaceX has become a dependable taxi to orbit for NASA, which is backing a new generation of privately built spacecraft that can ferry its astronauts and other customers to the ISS and, under the space agency’s more ambitious Artemis program, to the moon and eventually Mars.

Though Boeing has been relatively mute about its plans to sell commercial Starliner flights, the spacecraft would compete head-to-head with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which since 2020 has been NASA’s only vehicle for sending ISS crew to orbit from U.S. soil.

Seasoned test flight crew

Selected to ride aboard Starliner for its first crewed flight were two NASA veterans who have logged a combined 500 days in space over the course of two previous missions each to the space station. Mr. Wilmore is the designated commander for Monday’s flight, with Ms. Williams in the pilot seat.

Although Starliner is designed to fly autonomously, the astronauts can assume control of the spacecraft if necessary. The test flight calls for Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams to practice maneuvering the vehicle manually while en route to the ISS.

Ironically, the flight would mark the first crewed voyage to space using an Atlas rocket since the storied series of launch vehicles first sent astronauts, including John Glenn, on orbital flights for NASA’s Mercury program in the 1960s.

Once launched, the capsule will arrive at the space station after a flight of about 26 hours and dock with the orbiting research outpost some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. A resident ISS crew, currently comprising four U.S. astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts, will be there to greet them.

Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams are expected to remain at the space station for about a week before riding the Starliner back to Earth for a parachute and airbag-assisted landing in the U.S. Desert Southwest – the first time such a system has been used for crewed NASA missions.

The test flight comes at an especially critical moment for Boeing. Its airplane business is dealing with fallout from a midair blowout of a cabin panel door plug on a nearly new 737 MAX 9 in January, as well as previous deadly crashes of two 737 MAX jets.

Getting Starliner to this point has been a fraught process for Boeing, beset by years of development setbacks and more than $1.5 billion in charges for the aerospace giant on a $4.2 billion fixed-priced contract with NASA.

The space agency wants the redundancy of having two different U.S. rides to the ISS, which is expected to retire around 2030. NASA is encouraging private development of new space stations that could replace the ISS after its retirement, potentially giving Starliner new destinations.

Depending on the outcome of the forthcoming flight test, Starliner is booked to fly at least six more crewed missions to the space station for NASA.